


A Campus Christmas (Twenty Years Later)

by Anik LC (mrsdaphnefielding)



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/F, I am afraid this won't make much sense if you haven't read "Campus", back before we called Übers AUs, campus AU, commemorating 20 years of "Campus", it has no plot to speak of, this is just a nostalgic vignette, this is very sweet but 'tis the season, Über/Original
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:16:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 35,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22039924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrsdaphnefielding/pseuds/Anik%20LC
Summary: Twenty years after the original "Campus" takes place, some familiar figures gather for a shared holiday.
Relationships: Kathryn Janeway/Seven of Nine
Comments: 114
Kudos: 84





	1. pt. 1

**Author's Note:**

> Twenty years!
> 
> Revisiting the original "Campus" (2000-2007) is an odd blend of sensations for me: I wince at my younger self, a lot. I also admire my younger self's exuberance and tenacity, and the sheer chutzpah to decide and write a novel, out of nowhere, in a language not her own, often using words that do not quite mean what she thought they meant. 
> 
> There is ham-handed dialogue and flowery hyperbole, but the energy still springs right off the pages for me: the J/7 chemistry that inspired it all. Eliane's elegance and charisma as a leader. Joanna's stubborn, uncompromising idealism. Brett's soft butch charm and sunny demeanor. Agniesza's attitude and her complex struggles with labels. Bertha's acerbic one-liners and comfortable presence.
> 
> Back when I started working on "Campus", exactly twenty years ago, I was still in undergrad, just finishing my first degree. (I had no idea I would, eventually, get a PhD and end up a colleague to these characters) I also had not much of an idea how a university functions. Today, I shake my head at the scenario of assistants and secretaries making coffee for professors. "This is not how a university works!" I want to yell at my younger self at times. I even find myself yelling at Eliane's and Joanna's flirting: "You cannot say this! You absolutely cannot do this! This could constitute a harassment claim!"
> 
> But that's the beauty of being as young as I was then, perhaps - love and claims of selfhood easily trump protocol and propriety at that age. It also a statement on the state of the Western World twenty years ago: being publicly out was still much more of a risk. There were barely any out mainstream figures beyond Ellen, there was no Marriage Equality.
> 
> Where would their individual journeys have led Brett and Joanna, Bertha and Eliane, Agniesza, Philippe and even Bjarne over the past twenty years? - This is one glimpse at what might be "Campus", now.
> 
> (This isn't really a thing of chapters. It is one consecutive short story, but if I wait to post it in its entirety, it'll be the 2020 holiday season before I get to it. This is unbetaed (for now). And it really won't make much sense unless you've read "Campus". Crossposting to AO3 for easier accessibility)

1

“I’m sorry I’m late!”

The apartment door fell shut, the sound mingling with the thud of a pair of heels dropped quickly onto the hallway parquet.

“When did a dean ever respect our schedules?” Further down the hallway, Brett Garland came into view, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “We still have a couple of hours before everyone gets here.”

“Having to drink the Dean under the table for some student contracts is not my idea of holiday cheer,” Agniesza Matysek huffed as she set down her purse. “At least not in my off time.” She unwrapped a few yards of softly knitted scarf from around her neck and then shook out her hair.

“Off time is a concept that went pretty much out the window when you agreed to become Department Head,” Brett pointed out as she walked closer.

“If this is about me attending meetings between Christmas and New Year’s ---” Agniesza shrugged out of her coat. “City Council may be on hiatus, but you had a mentoring session scheduled yesterday, too!”

“City Council needs to recover after my latest inquiry, they just like to call it hiatus,” Brett joked, although they both knew that Brett’s seat on the city council for the Green party came with constant attacks from the far-right delegates. She took Agniesza’s coat to put it on a hanger. “And I am in a much better shape to coach someone when I’ve not been tearing into dimwitted bullies all day.”

“You said one term,” Agniesza reminded her. “One term, and you’d take a spot away from the limelight again, where they don’t attack you all the time.” She placed a hand on Brett’s chest, right above her heart. “You know I worry.”

Brett shrugged helplessly. “Someone’s gotta keep those jerks in check.” It was why she had run in the first place. “Just like someone needs to keep an eye on the Dean when he calls for ‘informal’ punch meetings.” 

“There is a history at this university with pushing things through on off days,” Agniesza agreed darkly. “Eliane would say the same thing.” She touched her hands to her cheeks, rosy from the winter cold. “And it wasn’t even the good punch.”

“Did you get some _kräppelchen_ with it, at least?” Brett asked gently before she leaned in and pressed a kiss to Agniesza’s brow. “You’ve been wearing the heels that make you grumpy, Princess,” she observed, nodding at the discarded heels on the floor.

Agniesza leaned against Brett’s shoulder with a sigh. “But they also make me tall.”

“Sure,” Brett agreed easily, letting the dishtowel fall to the floor, right next to the shoes, and taking Agniesza into her arms instead. In the embrace, she felt Agniesza look up over her shoulder at sounds down the hallway, from the open kitchen door.

“Is Emma already up?”

“She is making potato salad,” Brett relied. “I needed some help in the kitchen while you were ‘punching’ the dean.”

“Emma, touching mayonnaise?” Agniesza raised an eyebrow. “What have you done to our daughter?”

Brett pursed her lips. “She may have had her phone privileges reinstated.”

“God, I’m really sorry I’m so late.” Agniesza rubbed her hands together as she gladly moved deeper into the warmth of her family’s apartment. “What’s left to do?”

“Bringing up the extra china and chairs from the basement, cleaning and decorating ---”

“Emma could help decorate,” Agniesza suggested.

“You can ask her,” Brett said with a chuckle. “If you want a lecture about capitalist bourgeois ostentation during secularized holidays…”

“I swear, she doesn’t get that from me.” But the fond smile betrayed Agniesza’s remark.

“Says the mother who outdrinks the Dean to save her student contracts,” Brett said softly. She loped an arm around Agniesza’s waist. “We’ll disappear into the kitchen, and Adrian can help with the decorating.”

“Adrian’s idea of decorating is leaving his sports socks bunched up all over the place.” Agniesza rapped on a door left ajar in passing. “Sports socks that will have found their way into the hamper by the time our guests get here!”

There was a subdued whine of “Mom!” from the other side of the door.

Brett grinned. “You being Department Head definitely brings out the best in you, Princess.”

“Queen,” Agniesza corrected seamlessly and raised an eyebrow again, a move that cast the fine lines around her eyes into view. “You keeping that thought for date night?”

In reply, Brett’s hand around her waist slid a little lower, following the seam of Agniesza’s skirt. “Patience is not one of my virtues. Princess.” Brett leaned in for a kiss that had enough momentum to make Agniesza take a step backwards. “And with how crowded the apartment will be as of this afternoon…”

“Moms! Gross!” The door left ajar was kicked shut from the inside.

“He definitely gets _that_ from you,” Brett said with a grin.

“Socks!” Agniesza repeated loudly, but then her fingertips were tracing the corner of Brett’s lips and there was a sparkle to her gaze that hadn’t been there when she had walked in the door.

“You will miss each and every one of his bunched-up sports socks once he leaves for college after the summer,” Brett murmured.

Agniesza sighed. “I still hold up hope of him only going to Berlin for his degree.”

“You know he is still thinking about doing a gap year in South America,” Brett reminded her.

“Not today,” Agniesza groaned. “Today is the one day a year we get to pretend everything is still the good old days.”

Brett nudged her gently. “We raised him to have a consciousness.”

“I know,” Agniesza said unhappily. “In Berlin, at least Joanna could have an eye on him.”

Brett guffawed. “You know how big Berlin is?”

“You know how Joanna is when she is on a mission?” Agniesza countered.

“Do I ever,” Brett allowed.

Agniesza smiled as she pulled Brett into the kitchen. “I learned from the best, didn’t I?” She chuckled when Brett preened at that. “Brett. Darling. I love you, but that one’s on Eliane and Joanna. You are a cinnamon bun in com---

“Roll.” The teenager who was stirring the potato salad at the kitchen counter turned to give them both an exasperated eyeroll, a copy of Agniesza’s own expression. “It’s cinnamon _roll_. Stop trying with the memes, Mom.”

“Don’t disrespect your mother, Emma,” Brett admonished automatically.

“Either of your mothers,” Agniesza echoed. “But thanks for making the salad.”

“Mayonnaise is gross,” Emma replied, predictably.

“It’s vegan, and you don’t have to eat it,” Brett said with the patented patience of years of experience. “But we can take it from here, now that your mother is home from her punch breakfast, and you could instead bring up the extra china from the basement, and the box with the decorations?”

Emma threw in another eyeroll. “We only just survived Christmas, and you want more decorations up?”

“As you mothers are holding their annual bourgeois evening entertainment for their friends: yes. The extra china it is. And the centerpiece,” Agniesza deadpanned.

“At least one wedding investment that was worth it,” Brett muttered under her breath.

Agniesza turned to elbow her in the side. “Excuse me?” Aloud, she called, “Adrian would you please bring up the extra china and the decorations from the basement?”

Two moments passed before a slow “Yeees?” sounded from Adrian’s room and its door opened again.

Brett took in her son in the doorframe, idly wondering when she had started to tilt up her head the tiniest bit to look him in the eyes. Then her gaze fell onto the disarrayed room behind him. “Adrian, are those my dumbbells I see rolled under your bed?”

“And you’ve been pilfering my conditioner,” Agniesza said, nodding at his artfully disheveled hair. “Again.”

“Fine!” Adrian groaned. “I’ll go down and get those plates!”

“Thank you. The china box is in the dresser,” Agniesza said smoothly. “And change out of your pajamas before you leave the apartment!”

This was met with another groan before the door fell shut again, blending with a muted buzz from the entryway.

“Your mobile,” Brett pointed out.

“I hope no one’s stuck in traffic or missed a flight,” Agniesza murmured while she went for her purse.

Brett crossed her arms over her chest while she leaned against the wall again. “Bjarne could always be short a change of sled dogs.”

“But Bjarne is coming, right?” Emma piped up, trying hard to sound blasé about it.

“He sure is.” Agniesza exchanged a quick glance with Brett.

“Ah. Fine.” Emma shrugged and ducked out of sight.

“Just Bertha saying she landed and is on her way to her lunch traditional with her other Leipzig friends,” Agniesza said, holding up her mobile. “No sled dog incident,” she added quietly.

“I swear to God, it is some sort of karmic revenge that my own daughter thinks that Bjarne belongs on a poster cut,” Brett complained.

“If he had sported those tattoos and the hipster beard twenty years ago…” Agniesza pretended to give that scenario a thought. “And that lumberjack physique...”

“Which he gets from actually chopping wood,” Brett pointed out. “If he had joined that self-sustaining commune in the woods twenty years ago - where you would be chopping wood right alongside him, by the way - I wouldn’t have to watch Emma give him starry-eyed looks now.”

“It’s cute,” Agniesza disagreed readily. 

“Cute,” Brett grumbled. “Twenty years ago, Bjarne was nothing but a bad boyband haircut and a collection of horrible pick-up lines.”

Agniesza laughed. “Look who’s talking!” 

Brett didn’t get to reply because Adrian, now in jeans and a t-shirt, pushed past them to open the apartment door.

Agniesza shook her head. “Good thing our basement isn’t that cold.”

“At least he is dressed,” Brett said. “Come on, there is a menu waiting to be prepared.”

They didn’t get far in their cooking, though, before the apartment door opened again and Adrian walked into the kitchen, empty-handed.

“What box, in which cupboard?”

Agniesza sat down her cutting knife and turned around. “The dresser. I swear...”

Brett patted her the shoulder. “We’ll do it,” she decided. “But you help us with the extra chair later. That monstrosity is the only thing Bertha deems comfortable enough.”

Agniesza reached for her shawl again before she and Brett walked down the staircase towards the basement. “Remind me why are we doing this, again?”

Brett waited until they had rounded the next landing in companionable silence, easily having fallen into step. “Because we love them, and because we don’t see them otherwise any longer. - And because you live for that late hour when you bring out the schnapps and trade dirty jokes with Bertha when you two are the only ones left standing.” Brett paused for a moment. “Though I still think Eliane could keep up, but pretends she is done so she can disappear with Joanna.”


	2. pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's "Campus", twenty years later. It's a holiday vignette.
> 
> There's no plot to speak of, just sweet nostalgia. 
> 
> It's wonderful to be writing these characters again, and it's wonderful to see you again, after so many years.

2

_Agniesza reached for her shawl again before she and Brett walked down the staircase towards the basement. “Remind me why are we doing this, again?”_

_Brett waited until they had rounded the next landing in companionable silence, easily having fallen into step. “Because we love them, and because we don’t see them otherwise any longer. - And because you live for that late hour when you bring out the schnapps and trade dirty jokes with Bertha when you two are the only ones left standing.” Brett paused for a moment. “Though I still think Eliane could keep up, but pretends she is done so she can disappear with Joanna.”_

They had reached the basement door. Brett fumbled for the light switch and automatically offered a steadying hand to Agniesza to move down the final, uneven set of stairs. The air was stale down here, mellow with age and forgotten goods.

“There, in the dresser!” Agniesza motioned at the piece of furniture while Brett busied herself with opening the small padlock that guarded their stored belongings behind latticed wood. “I understand he doesn’t remember we used to change his diapers on this, but surely he can recognize a dresser?!” She opened the middle drawer and gestured for Brett to remove a heavy, unlabeled box that gave off a clang of porcelain when Brett set it down on the dresser. “Where else would we keep it? What else would we use a dresser for?!”

“I can think of a thing or two.”

Brett’s voice was suddenly close to her ear, a warm brush of air, and Agniesza yelped when Brett unceremoniously lifted her off her feet.

“You’ll get back issues again,” Agniesza warned, bracing herself on Brett’s shoulders.

Brett made no motion to set her down. “I do work out. And if Adrian wouldn’t keep ‘borrowing’ my weights…”

“The ergo therapist advised you ages ago to switch to something suaver,” Agniesza pointed out halfheartedly.

“I am plenty suave,” Brett protested, though her breathing was becoming labored. She kept Agniesza suspended for two stubborn extra seconds and then slowly set her down on top of the dresser. Her hands slid down from Agniesza’s hips, following the length of the skirt until she could curl her fingers behind the back of Agniesza’s stocking-clad knees.

Agniesza’s head fell forward when first warm breath and then warm lips brushed against her ear. She caught sight of Brett’s hand easily spanning the curve of her leg, thumbs pushing the skirt upward and out of the way, inch by inch, a rasp of callused finger pads against thin nylons. She shifted forward in reaction.

“Brett…” It was half a sigh, and Brett reached up with one hand to draw the shawl away from her neck. “We’re going to catch a cold.”

Brett kissed along the newly bared line of tendon along Agniesza’s neck. “I guess you will have to come up with an idea of how to keep us warm, then.” Her hands slid to the back of Agniesza’s thighs, moving up slowly, notably, between warm skin and the surface of the dresser. 

“What if one of our neighbors comes down because they need something from the basement –” Agniesza tried to reason.

“Then they need a cold shower in addition.” Brett grinned, the deepened lines around the familiar reckless expression softer in the dim light of the overhead bulb.

Agniesza pushed her fingers through the short hair at the nape of Brett’s neck. “I remember a similarly persuasive argument in a paternoster, once.”

“Shame they tore that down,” Brett mumbled against her skin.

Agniesza drew Brett’s head level with her gaze again, enjoying the way Brett’s hair fell tousled into her face, still with the same verve as back then in the paternoster.

“We will give Adrian a heart attack if he remembers he wanted to help us,” Agniesza pointed out when Brett still didn’t stop the slow ascent of her fingers. She bit her lip when Brett reached a particularly receptive spot. 

Brett gave Agniesza an amused smile. “Please, he is seventeen, he already forgot about having agreed to it.”

“That’s your influence.”

The comment turned into a gasp when Brett did away with the pantyhose with one decisive pull, replacing it with warm fingers against already sensitized skin.

“Any complaints?”

Agniesza tipped her head back, robbed of an eloquent answer as she shifted on the dresser, closer to Brett. “Shut up and put those hands to some use, Garland.” It came out as half a growl as her fingers wound back into Brett’s hair.

Brett was already pushing the silky, heavy blouse that Agniesza wore up and out of the way, tugging the unevenly padded bra out of the way with impatience, though her hands gentled against denser tissue that still reacted differently to touch. Agniesza wasn’t flinching at it any longer. Now, it was just a deeper intake of breath.

“Hey.” Brett kept her hand still, resting lightly, but not withdrawing. She wrapped the other one around Agniesza’s back, her breaths coming quick. “Amazon. Stay with me.”

Agniesza curved forward against those hands, resting her head against Brett’s neck. “I will.” It was the same quiet promise she had made then, and she was again left marveling, lightheaded, that she had been able to keep it. She moved to kiss Brett, blissfully aware that they were here, together.

She reached for the buttons of Brett’s shirt, blindly, and cursed under her breath when it took her long seconds to push the first button through its hole. Then she held on tightly when Brett’s fingers slipped past her underwear and into wetness beneath.

Brett didn’t complain about the cold when Agniesza pushed the shirt off her shoulders, or when she bunched up Brett’s top in search of more warm skin that flexed under her touch in the sudden rush, ready and generous and still hers to keep. Blindly, Agniesza reached for the softer slope of skin along Brett’s stomach and lower, to the button of her jeans, only to have Brett suddenly stiffen in her hold.

“Someone’s coming down the stairs.”

Torn out of her haze, Agniesza listened, much more preoccupied with the fact that Brett’s fingers had abruptly stopped their rhythm. Slow, uneven steps moved down the basement stairs, somewhere beyond the breathless heat of their embrace.

“That’s none of our kids,” Agniesza assessed quickly. Brett moved to step away, but Agniesza threw a leg around her to lock her in place. “Brett Garland, if you stop now, I swear to God –”

Her hips pushed forward on the dresser on their own volition, searching for the interrupted, deeper touch.

Brett glanced at the open door and the hallway beyond and then leaned forward. She kicked the lattice shut, succeeding in leaving it at least ajar. The light switch was in reach and the bulb flickered off, leaving them with their breaths echoing off the darkness.

“Probably just Mrs. Claussen from the second floor, getting some potatoes for lunch,” Brett whispered, still listening after the steps, rooted to the spot.

The rasp of her fly being yanked down in one careless move echoed through the basement a mere second before the steps came around the corner.

“Princess! We need to be quiet!”

Brett more felt than saw Agniesza give an impatient shrug, deft fingers moving past her waistband with intent. The voice against her ear was nothing but a warm, wet wisp of air. “I guess we will see just how quiet you can be.”

Brett rested her head on Agniesza’s shoulder just in time to cover a groan with a soft bite, but she quickly had to move up to swallow Agniesza’s moan when her fingers, blissfully, returned to their earlier pace just as the steps moved into the cubicle across the hallway and to the left. The echo of another dim light bulb reached them, illuminating two long minutes charged with the forced slower, quieter rhythm, winding up the mood even further. Need licked at already tenuous control, until the same, slow steps finally shuffled around the corner again.

Brett already moved a split second before that, with enough impetus to have the dresser bump against the wall.

“Iszt…”

Agniesza squeezed her eyes shut. The tension spreading through her limbs bled into her own touch, but she was so far gone that she didn’t even chuckle when a stuttering inhale was all Brett could manage in reaction. Brett dissolved into quickened breaths, her movements erratic, making Agniesza fall two maddening moments behind until she, as well, succumbed to the surge that pushed their entangled limbs even closer against one another.

With a small thud, the dresser assumed its habitual position. The lattice door still stood ajar.

Enveloped by familiar warmth, with stray curls sticking to her face, Agniesza struggled to catch her breath.

“I cannot believe you.”

Brett gazed at her at a very short distance, eyes twinkling with mirth. “Your indignation would be a lot more plausible if you didn’t still have your hand in my pants.”

Agniesza disentangled her legs and halfheartedly pushed Brett away from her. “God, you are obnoxious.”

Brett laughed. “I cannot believe that still comes as a surprise to you.” She pulled her jeans back onto her hips.

“On the other hand, I absolutely can believe that you would get us into this situation,” Agniesza said primly. Then she looked onto the floor beneath her feet with a sigh. “I liked those nylons.”

Brett was still grinning. “But you liked this better.”

“Obnoxious,” Agniesza mumbled, but she reached out to pull Brett closer again, by her belt loops. She drew both their hands across Brett’s torso, gently, before she pulled the top back into place. “I cannot believe that we can still – I mean, just like this.”

“Mhm.” Brett’s arms wrapped around her, her voice close to Agniesza’s ear. “We should try this more often when we’re not dead exhausted, and without perpetually embarrassed, hormonal teenagers next door.”

Agniesza sighed languidly. “We don’t do this nearly often enough.” She reached up to comb her hair back into a semblance of order.

“I am sure we can arrange something with Mrs. Claussen,” Brett said, her expression as alight as Agniesza’s answering smile. She wasn’t quite sure how she had ended up against the roughhewn latticework of their basement unit, out of breath and attempting to button up her shirt, but she wasn’t about to protest. “And on that note, merry Christmas to me.”

Agniesza adjusted her wrinkled blouse and the padded bra underneath. “At least with the kids in college, their poor mothers will not have to sneak off to cellar for some privacy.”

“We could always come back down later, with the guest rooms occupied.” Brett smoothed Agniesza’s shawl back into place around her neck and offered her a hand to slide off the dresser. “Come on, Princess. Let’s get up those boxes.”

They walked up the stairs slowly, closely, still somewhat unsteadily, each with a box tucked under one arm and the fingers of their free hands laced together.


	3. pt. 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's "Campus", twenty years later. It's a holiday vignette.
> 
> More guests are arriving (and my chapter count keeps expanding, this is feeling *very* Campus all right).

3

_Brett smoothed Agniesza’s shawl back into place around her neck and offered her a hand to slide off the dresser. “Come on, Princess. Let’s get up those boxes.”_

_They walked up the stairs slowly, closely, still somewhat unsteadily, each with a box tucked under one arm and the fingers of their free hands laced together._

The hallway lay empty when they entered their apartment and then managed to sneak into the kitchen without either of their children noticing.

“Thank God Philippe is bringing the cake, or we’d have nothing but potato salad to offer with coffee,” Brett commented with a look at the clock mounted on the wall. She lifted a checkered kitchen apron off the hook next to it. 

Brett’s shirt, Agniesza noted, was buttoned up the wrong way.

“At least everything will have finished marinating,” Brett decided with a look at the bowls on the counter. She reached across Agniesza’s head to get a second apron.

“Wait…” Agniesza stalled her and moved in, pushing two buttons open again.

“Uhm, Princess?”

“You mixed up the buttons.” Agniesza’s fingers opened a third button and moved idly across soft skin. Brett leaned down to steal another kiss that was tampered by the chime of Agniesza’s cell phone signaling an incoming message.

“Sled dog incident after all?” Brett asked brightly, while Agniesza stretched out an arm, trying not to move away more than she absolutely had to.

“No.” Agniesza frowned at the small screen. “Guess who is going to be late.”

Brett canted her head to the side and pretended to think. “I would say: you. But our timing is still –”

Agniesza slapped her lightly with the offered apron. “Stop trying to distract me, Garland.” She didn’t step away, though, when Brett crowded her against the sink and trailed warm fingers up her arms.

“Eliane is coming up from Frankfurt with the train, she missed her connection,” Slowly, Agniesza buttoned up Brett’s shirt. “There was some delay out of Indiana.”

Brett blinked in surprise. “Wait, she wasn’t in Berlin over Christmas already?”

Agniesza shrugged. “I thought she had been, but probably something came up in the Department –"

Brett nodded. “And Joanna was on some fancy retreat with the Transdisciplinary Gender Studies Center, anyway.”

“And then she was probably at the library,” Agniesza guessed. “Or at the archives.”

Brett thought about that for a moment. “No. Paperwork.”

“True,” Agniesza conceded. “Paperwork. This is Joanna we’re talking about.”

“Wait, does that mean we will be having a reunion scene in our living room?” Brett straightened.

“Probably.” Agniesza leaned forward, her chuckle a vibration against Brett’s neck. “Bertha is going to have a field day.”

“That should be worth it,” Brett allowed, instinctively canting her head to the side as Agniesza kissed the curve of her jaw. “And that’s going to be all we serve because at this rate, there is not going to be a roast---"

“As if you would mind,” Agniesza pointed out, her lips still brushing against Brett’s jaw as she spoke. “You’re the vegetarian.” She had left the two top buttons of Brett shirt open, just enough to push it to the side and kiss the juncture of neck and shoulder.

Brett sighed. “Princess…”

This time, it was the loud ring of the doorbell that prevented a further lag behind schedule.

Brett stepped back with regret, the last half hour still echoing through her.

“I’ll get it!” Emma called from the hallway with more enthusiasm than she had displayed all morning.

“Intercom first!” Brett and Agniesza called at the same time.

“Emma, Sweetie, that’s not Bjarne yet!” Brett added after a moment.

“It’s probably Philippe. He said he would be early, to help.” Agniesza looped an arm around Brett’s waist and turned on the oven with the other. “It wouldn’t be much different from his usual lunch date with us. His words, not mine.”

“That’s someone else who won’t mind seeing Bjarne,” Brett muttered.

Agniesza rolled her eyes. “Please.”

“Bjarne was really sweet with him last year,” Brett reminded her. “And wait till Bjarne sees Albrecht.”

“It’s Philippe!” Emma announced from the direction of the apartment door, followed by the sound of the buzzer.

“So dessert’s safe, and so is the wine.” Agniesza nodded and then moved towards the door. “Emma, can you keep Albrecht out of the kitchen?”

“Sure.” Emma try to sound blasé, again, but Brett easily beat her to the level of enthusiasm when a well-combed Golden Retriever bounded along the hallway towards them.

„Albrecht, my boy!“ Brett crouched down to ruffle the dog’s amber coat. “Who’s a good boy today? Who?”

Philippe Riquet, leash and bag pouch still in one hand, a large cake carrier in the other, stood on the doorstep in an immaculate winter coat and hat and shook his head at the scene. “I’ll have you know that I brushed him for fifteen minutes before we left the house.”

“Philippe!” Agniesza leaned in to kiss him on both cheeks and accepted his hat. Contrary to his dog’s flowing coat, Philippe kept what little hair he had left shorn close to his head. The deep lines on his fine-boned face had him look a little more than his age and when he hung his coat on the rack, Agniesza couldn’t help but think that the soft, woolen jersey he wore – in a subdued, festive burgundy – sat the tiniest bit too loose on him. “We’re a bit behind schedule, as usual, and your cake will probably save the day. As usual.”

Philippe smiled at her. “Well, _chérie,_ we’ll just leave your wife and my dog in conversation, then, and take care of the menu.”

When Brett eventually joined them in the kitchen, Philippe had tied Agniesza’ apron around his waist and was adjusting the oven temperature. From down the hallway, the voices of Emma and Albrecht carried over.

“He will need a walk later,” Philippe remarked.

“Emma will volunteer.” Brett turned on the tap with a wrist to wash her hands. “He is such a sweetheart.”

“Ask my living room plants about it.” Philippe’s wry tone wasn’t as joking as it could have been.

“Another victim this week?” Agniesza said over her shoulder from where she was slicing carrots.

“He has his favorites.” Philippe sighed. “Too bad they are also mine. - Sometimes I still fear I am too old and too impatient for parenting anything beyond a house plant. But then he just gives me that look… – And he gets me out of the house, come rain or come shine.”

In passing, Agniesza quietly placed a hand on his arm.

“He’s still a kid,” Brett defended the dog. “Okay, teenager. But before you know it, you’ll both be distinguished gentlemen of a certain age, sitting around the couch table, listening to Debussy.”

“He doesn’t even like Debussy.” Philippe opened a drawer and took out a small egg whisk. “Heavens knows where he gets that from.”

Brett reached over to steal a carrot slice from Agniesza’ cutting board. “I’ll get you another plant,” she offered.

“It’s not your responsibility,” Philippe pointed out gently. “But thank you. I love your hybrids.”

“I know what else you’ll love,” Brett said, popping the carrot into her mouth despite Agniesza glaring at her. “Do you know why we are so late with the menu?”

Philippe raised an eyebrow.

“Not that,” Brett said impatiently. “Although –”

“Right,” Agniezsa cut in. “I still need to get it signed by Main Controlling, but Dean Stifter has approved our aide contracts. Both of them, through to autumn.”

“Wonderful!” Philippe raised the egg whisk in triumph. “Congratulations, Madame Department Head. – Tough negotiations?”

“Not really negotiations, but I had to down two glasses of that sugary punch from the booths at the Brühl.”

Philippe winced in sympathy.

“Stifter can hold even less of it, which works in our favor,” Agniesza said with a smirk. “Though the real hardship was having to listen to the remarks of his faux-progressive wife.” She punctured the air with her knife. “I swear, if one more person calls us this city’s lesbian power couple, I will –”

“Hey. Princess.” Brett was there immediately, a warm hand against the small of Agniesza’s back while she took the knife and moved it out of reach with the other. “We scoff at labels, remember?”

“I know,” Agniesza said unhappily. She closed her eyes for a moment, leaning into the familiar warmth of Brett, but the suddenly harsher sound of egg whisk against bowl made her blink, and she stepped away again. Her hand grazed Brett’s in a fleeting, apologetic caress. “I’ll try to get the signatures on the 2nd, if anyone is in,” Agniesza added in Philippe’s direction.

Philippe shook his head as if to clear away an unwanted thought and the whoosh of his whisking returned to a normal rhythm. “If it’s Manuela, I will do it, and we’ll get the signatures in no time,” he offered, and then changed the topic. “When’s Joanna getting in? I’ve barely seen her all autumn!”

Brett glanced at the clock. “She should be on the train already.”

As if on cue, the doorbell rang again.

“Is that her?”, Philippe asked, while Brett called “Intercom!” into the hallway.

“I know, Ma!” Emma replied from somewhere out of sight.

“That should be Bjarne,” Agniesza said, transferring her carrots to a large baking dish.

“Probably.” Brett’s expression remained carefully neutral.

“On a reindeer this time?” Philippe guessed with a small grin.

Brett shrugged. “Flying is fine, as long it doesn’t involve fuel.”

“It’s Bjarne!” Emma announced, not sounding anything close to blasé now.

“Karma,” Brett muttered to herself, walking to the door while Agniesza put the roast into the oven. But when Bjarne rounded the landing and stepped into the apartment, dropping his duffel bag in the corner without even looking, her smile belied her grousing, especially when Bjarne made a point of greeting her daughter first.

“Hi, Emma. Wow, look at you!”

Where the jersey might have sat a little loose on Philippe, Bjarne Lindqvist was the opposite case, his shirt tight on his arms as he pulled off his jacket. He still sported a full shock of blond hair, though edges of gray lined his temples and his well-trimmed beard.

“How you come up with elaborate hair produce out of nowhere up there…” Brett needled him, giving a blushing Emma a moment to recover.

“One pomade is all it takes,” Bjarne replied with an easy smile, running a hand along his jaw that had taken on a more pronounced edge over the years. “And you don’t want to know how we produce it.” His complexion was that of a man who spent a lot of time in the outdoors and the hands that closed around Brett’s shoulders and almost lifted her off the ground were callused and strong. “Nice apron there, Garland.”

“Get off me, you oaf,” Brett muttered, even as she didn’t let go off him yet. “Darn, it’s good to see you!”

“I saw the election footage!” Bjarne stepped back, and underneath his rolled-up cuffs, Brett could see the intricate tattoo running up his left wrist. “Congratulations. How is it going with the green housing policy? I want an update!”

“I could use your input on a few schemes,” Brett admitted. “I looked at your Härjedalen designs and –” 

“Party politics and world revolution only after coffee,” Agniesza said with a pointed eyeroll as she stepped between them. “Please.”

“Agniesza.” Bjarne kissed her cheek, left and right, but made no motion to lift her off the ground. Then his attention got captured by the dog that curiously looked around the living room corner and hid half behind Emma, tension running along his back.

“And this is the famous Albrecht?” Bjarne crouched down to get a better look and waved at Philippe who had appeared in the kitchen door. “Hej, Philippe.” He shook his head. “Wow. They really gave you the most lesbian dog imaginable, didn’t they? What is this? Three quarters Golden Retriever and then someone didn’t pay attention in the kennel for a hot second?”

“Bjarne!” Agniesza protested, looking over at Emma.

Bjarne grinned and turned his attention back to Philippe. “I could have brought you a proper hound from the North.”

“You’d probably bring an actual wolf,” Brett pointed out. “Look at poor Albrecht, he probably thinks you are a wolf!”

Bjarne remained where he was, still crouched down. “Good, that means kinship. Right, Albrecht? – He’s a beauty!”

“He’s probably overwhelmed because Bjarne smells like the entire forest,” Emma piped up from where she stood with the dog, trying to calm him.

“And apropos forest, there is a Blackforest Cake in the kitchen that needs to be cut.” Agniesza curled a hand into the flap of Brett’s apron and gave it a tug. “Emma, would you set the coffee table, please?”

Bjarne looked at Brett and Agniesza ambling back towards the kitchen, Agniesza pulling Brett half behind her. “Good to see some things don’t change.”

“With those two?” Philippe smiled. “Never.”

Two moments of silence passed, with Albrecht now pressing closer to Philippe, whose hand absently reached down to smooth along the dog’s head.

Bjarne stood slowly, mindful not to spook Albrecht. “I never pictured you as a dog person.”

“Neither did I,” Philippe said drily. “But everyone in this household and Joanna disagreed.”

“Good grief!” Bjarne chuckled. “You didn’t stand a chance, did you?” 

“The first few weeks, I was vacuuming up every hair within the minute, driving myself crazy,” Philippe related with chagrin.

Bjarne gave the dog a pensive look. “You didn’t exactly pick one with short hair,” he said then, slowly.

“Believe me, I noticed.” Philippe sighed. “And I really wasn’t a dog person, no matter what Brett will tell you. But I am turning into one, apparently? – I don’t even mind the hair that much any longer. And I own muddy rainboots now!”

Bjarne laughed at the scandalized tone. “Keep that up, and you’d fit right in with us!”

Philippe arched an eyebrow. “Not unless you invest in a grand piano.”

Bjarne gave him a frank look. “You sound a lot more like yourself again. I’m glad.”

“I do?” Philippe smiled a little forlornly. “I feel as if I am changing so much. - Half of the time I wish he could see all this, and then I wonder again whether he would even recognize me any longer.”

“You just asked me about a grand piano,” Bjarne reminded him. “That’s about as Philippe as it gets. You just have a really cute dog in addition now.”

Philippe fidgeted for a moment. “I better head back into the kitchen,” he decided then. “I don’t want either of them to massacre my cake, and I left the crème brûlée half done!”

“Your crème brûlée!” Bjarne smacked his lips. “I book this trip down as a success already. – Hey, Emma, you need any help setting the table? And I hear you’re this cutie’s regular sitter, so can you explain to me how he ended up with such a monstrous name? I mean, _Albrecht_? Really?”


	4. pt. 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's "Campus", twenty years later. It's a holiday vignette.
> 
> (there is no plot to speak of, just sweet nostalgia)
> 
> (okay, perhaps there is a tiny bit of plot)

4

_Philippe fidgeted for a moment. “I better head back into the kitchen,” he decided then. “I don’t want either of them to massacre my cake, and I left the crème brûlée half done!”_

_“Your crème brûlée!” Bjarne smacked his lips. “I book this trip down as a success already. – Hey, Emma, you need any help setting the table? And I hear you’re this cutie’s regular sitter, so can you explain to me how he ended up with such a monstrous name? I mean,_ Albrecht? _Really?”_

Emma waited until Philippe had returned to the kitchen and conversation and noises resumed. “It’s from a ballet,” she then said, the dog at her side. “The first one where he saw Robert dance. _Giselle_.”

Bjarne looked down at Albrecht. “He could have called this one Giselle. With that hair!”

“We wanted to get him a girl, first,” Emma admitted as she followed Albrecht to the low, inviting living room couch. Only now, Bjarne saw that there were two comfortably worn blankets in a spot next to it on the floor that Albrecht claimed immediately. “But then Schubert told us about this litter, and the how breeder didn’t want any of them, and we got him out.”

Bjarne nodded at her. “Well done.”

Emma blushed again. “I would have liked to keep him,” she admitted, reaching down to smooth out one of the blankets. “But…”

“But Philippe needs him more?” Bjarne guessed gently.

Emma gave him a startled look. “Yes,” she conceded then. “Yes, he does.”

“But it looks like you’re his favorite aunt,” Bjarne added and then gestured through the large open room at the dining table across from then. “And I guess we better set that coffee table because we both know how Agniesza gets when one keeps her waiting.”

Emma sighed, giving Albrecht a last ruffle. “I guess.”

Bjarne helped set the table, and then he helped Adrian carry over the large grandfather chair from the guest room.

“Head of the table?” he inquired, the chair heavy between them. “Darn, is it just me, or is this thing getting heavier every year?”

Adrian merely grunted in agreement, shaking a strand of dark hair out his face, but he sat the chair down easily.

“Brett’s parenting at work,” Bjarne muttered, more to himself. He straightened, stretching his back. 

“More like her weights,” Emma said with exasperation.

“And that’s Agniesza’s parenting at work,” Bjarne hummed, this time really only into his beard. Aloud, he replied, “I don’t need weights any longer, at least not in winter. With all the snow shoveling…” And although both Emma and Adrian were hardly the kids any longer who had listened to his stories of snow storms and frozen water tanks with rapture, they still enjoyed his tales. “I had to take the sleigh to the station,” he told them. “Well, to the outskirts.”

“Bjarne, if the kids want tattoos or a Yeti after this stay, I will fully blame you,” Agniesza said in passing, carrying in a gleaming thermos of coffee.

“As long as it’s just a Yeti,” Philippe commented from two steps behind her, balancing a near picture-perfect Black Forest Cake.

“Philippe, that looks amazing.” Bjarne craned his head to get a better look.

“Thank you. And please watch Albrecht because he thinks the same,” Philippe retorted easily and nodded at Albrecht, who had indeed perked up and was looking at the coffee table with interest. A chime sounded from the kitchen. Philippe turned his head. “Don’t touch those ramekins!”

“You think I cannot handle a few ramekins?” Brett call back in good humor. “Hey, wait, I think I just found your miniature blowtorch!”

“Brett!!” Philippe hurried back towards the kitchen, Agniesza following him with a fond eyeroll.

“The mood is a lot better again this year,” Bjarne observed, letting himself slump into one corner of the couch.

Adrian nodded after Philippe. “He is doing a lot better this year. Last year, it was barely a few months after –”

“And he’s got Albrecht now,” Emma said firmly, taking the other side of the couch, next to Albrecht’s blankets. She glanced at her brother, then at Bjarne. “But they are always a little weird when you all get here.”

As if on cue, the doorbell rang again.

“Emma, I think you just jinxed it,” Bjarne sighed, making Adrian snicker.

Philippe appeared in the kitchen door, wearing a pair of oven mittens as he held onto a small tray of ramekins. “Is that Joanna?”

“Why are you practicing Elaine’s lines?” Brett asked over his shoulder.

“Eliane’s actual line being, ‘Start the coffee without me, I’m barely in Eisenach’,” Agniesza called from behind them.

“That is not a good line,” Brett stated.

“It’s Bertha!” Emma had checked the video intercom.

“That settles it.” Bjarne pushed himself to his feet again and Albrecht, noting the general nervousness, followed suit. “The party has started.”

Through the open door, the sound of measured steps drew closer until the statuesque figure of Bertha Daniels stepped across the threshold, momentarily dwarfing the doorframe. She was decked out in a red coat and enormous handbag, her lips painted a matching, glossy shade. Her hair, she still wore pinned up, dyed in a blonde now that was closer to pale.

“Good grief, don’t you think it’s about time you finally invested in an elevator?!”

Bjarne was the first to move. “Daniels!” He enveloped her in a bear hug.

“Don’t try to lift me, for the sake of both our backs,” Bertha warned him, but returned his hug just as tightly. “How have you been, you hulk?”

Bjarne grinned, drawing back. “Retirement is still treating you well, I see.”

“And it’s good to see you are not in prison this year,” Bertha retorted, also grinning.

“That was one time,” Bjarne complained.

“Twice,” Betha reminded him sternly, giving a passable imitation of her mother’s tone.

“But the second time wasn’t for the holidays,” Bjarne protested.

“And it was for climate action,” Emma whispered, starstruck.

“Emma!” Bertha turned head. “My God, when did you turn twenty?!”

Emma squirmed under the attention while Bertha pushed her handbag at Bjarne. “Be a love and take that for me.”

“Why is our daughter swooning over a convict?” Brett complained under her breath.

Agniesza leaned against her shoulder for a moment. “Would you rather we’d have to explain to her what a commune is?”

“What are you keeping in here?” Bjarne lifted Bertha’s handbag. “An anvil?”

“My pocket menorah,” Bertha corrected him while she hugged both Adrian and Agniesza to her. “There’s one night left and I do have my standards. Even the nice young fellow at customs did finally see reason when it pinged in my hand luggage, and I barely yelled at him.”

“How’s the family?” Brett asked, stepping in with a laugh.

“Congratulations, chairwoman!” Bertha hugged Brett close to her. “I followed the coverage. And the kids are doing well, granddaughter included. - I was visiting Jonah, so everyone had to watch the election night coverage with me.”

“I’d rather have had different election results,” Brett admitted, stepping back. “But here we are.”

Bertha shrugged out of her coat. “And, are you already getting ‘lesbian power couple’ home story requests?”

Agniesza heaved a long-suffering sigh in the background.

“Don’t get her started,” Brett said quickly while she hung Bertha’s coat on the rack.

“And how’s your mother?” Philippe chimed in, sans ramekins, but still in Agniesza’s apron and oven mittens as he leaned in to kiss Bertha’s cheeks.

“Just splendidly,” Bertha said, raising her hands in wry defeat. “And to imagine I once thought that, by this age, I would have turned into my mother! Not having her still berate my life choices and my latkes and my dye job as if it was 1992.”

“Please. Mrs. Silberstein is going to outlive all of us,” Agniesza scoffed. “And I think the color suits you.”

“And that’s why I am here for the last candle, and not across the channel,” Bertha said with a broad smile. She closed her eyes for a second. “Also, it smells wonderful in here, which I attribute fully to Philippe.” She looked between him and Agniesza. “I swore myself not to ask about the Department, but… How’s the Department?”

Agniesza gave her a fond look. “No one could ever replace you, Bertha.”

“The usual,” Philippe added. “Agniesza drunk the Dean under the punch booth for student aide contracts this morning.”

“Same old, then,” Bertha conceded with a laugh. “I miss the early days after the transfer when we still had Albrecht.”

Having heard his name, the dog perked up from where he was standing behind Philippe.

Bertha stopped in her motions and gave Albrecht a look of critical appraisal. “So this is the community dog?”

“Albrecht is is only here when Philippe is visiting, or traveling,” Emma said demurely.

Philippe placed an oven-mitten clad hand on his hip. “The actual story is that Brett and Emma wanted a dog. And now they are living vicariously through mine when I travel.” He looked down at Albrecht with an affectionate smile. “But I don’t travel as much.”

Bertha shook her head in amusement, looking at Albrecht for a moment longer. “Good grief, they really got you the most lesbian dog possible.” She glanced up at Philippe. “How are you holding up, dear?”

“I curse them all every time I need to take him out in the rain,” Philippe said lightly, pointing with a cushioned thumb at Brett and Agniesza and their kids. “But I am in much better shape. With all the walks.”

Bertha accepted his evasive answer for the time being and walked ahead in direction of the living room. “Loves, I need a decent cup of tea. Just a couple of years away and I am already unaccustomed to the winter cold here!”

“Coming right up!” Philippe said with a flourish and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen again.

“So how’s the garden?” Brett asked when Bertha had settled into the chair Adrian and Bjarne had just moved.

“I planted a sea of blue iris and yellow peonies this year, as a pet project.” Bertha said smoothly. “European flowerbed. - I cannot believe this Brexit bollocks has come to this. Boris bloody Johnson! That’s not how I imagined my retirement idyll.” She lightly hit the table with a fist. “Bollocks to this election. I think I’m still not sober again.”

Over on the couch, Adrian grinned at the amount of cursing.

“You could always come back here,” Agniesza suggested. “People keep asking about you.”

“Down to the cashier at the china store down Ritter Street,” Philippe said, walking in with a delicate cup, steam rising from its surface.

“Back here?” Bertha huffed. “With the amount of AfD votes you’ve just collected?”

“I’m wrangling those,” Brett proclaimed, with more ease than she felt.

Bertha shook her head. “Who could, these days?” she asked. “That attack on the synagogue over in Halle this autumn… That’s barely half an hour away. – And it wasn’t some madman, just your general racist.”

A few beats of silence followed, no one having a reply to that. Then Bertha picked up her teacup with dainty fingers, taking a first sip and nodding at Philippe. “Thanks, love. - If this Brexit nonsense runs its course, I may need a visa to visit next year.” 

“You simply should have married Paul, for EU citizenship,” Agniesza said with practicality.

“Fair point,” Bertha admitted with a dip of her head. “But I’d be stuck somewhere in the middle of Tyrol, then.” She took another, tiny sip of tea. “Though that is beginning to look a lot more appealing than I ever thought it would.”

“Paul would probably still marry you for EU citizenship,” Philippe pointed out. “And not just for that.”

“He is a sweetheart,” Bertha agreed with a sigh. “And it’s true, having a booty call a plane ride away, when you aren’t sure whether you’ll put out your back on the plane already, does defy the purpose of a booty call.”

“Bertha!” Agniesza gasped, scandalized for once. “There are minors present!”

“Mom.” Emma rolled her eyes through her blush, a carbon copy of her mother’s expression. “I know what a booty call is.”

Brett drew a hand over her face with a sigh and pinched her nose. “See, I’d sleep better if I didn’t know that.”

Bertha shrugged without remorse. “You’ve given births, you better do your Kegels.” She looked at Brett and Agniesza. “Especially as you get older.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Emma admitted, as Bjarne snickered.

Brett choked. “I am relieved, honey.”

Bertha looked at the assembly over the rim of her teacup. “Are Lil and Joanna not here yet?”

“Turns our Eliane is only flying in today and she missed her connection,” Agniesza said with a sigh. “She’s taking the train up from Frankfurt and says we should have coffee without her.”

“Coffee without her?” Bertha protested. “That is surreal!” Then something else occurred to her. “Wait, there was no shared Berlin Christmas tree?” She caught Philippe’s meaningfully raised eyebrow from where he stood leaning against the dining room door and exhaled in a huff. “Figures.” She shook her head. “Lil accepting that Bloomington Chair was really the most pigheaded decision ever –”

“It wasn’t so bad when Jo still moved between guest professorships,” Brett disagreed. “But since she’s taken on the transdisciplinary unit in Berlin –”

“Please,” Bertha held up a hand and set down her teacup with a sigh. “I think I still haven’t recovered from the year they weren’t talking. Not to each other, that is. The rest of us heard all about it.”

“God.” A collective groan went around the room and Brett buried her head in her hands. “Don’t remind me.”

“Let’s not revisit that particular ice age,” Philippe agreed, counting through the cake forks on the table while Bertha gave Brett a longer look.

“How is Joanna holding up?” she asked, quietly.

“Just as stubborn,” Brett said with a sigh. “You know her. Though I think she put in so many hours this past year she barely had a minute to think about it.”


	5. pt. 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's "Campus", twenty years later. It's a holiday vignette.
> 
> (there is no plot to speak of, just sweet nostalgia)
> 
> (okay, perhaps there is a tiny bit of plot)
> 
> (unbetaed. - shorter tonight, but I promised a friend to post this today)

5

_“Please,” Bertha held up a hand and set down her teacup with a sigh. “I think I still haven’t recovered from the year they weren’t talking. Not to each other, that is. The rest of us heard all about it.”_

_“God.” A collective groan went around the room and Brett buried her head in her hands. “Don’t remind me.”_

_“Let’s not revisit that particular ice age,” Philippe agreed, counting through the cake forks on the table while Bertha gave Brett a longer look._

_“How is Joanna holding up?” she asked, quietly._

_“Just as stubborn,” Brett said with a sigh. “You know her. Though I think she put in so many hours this past year she barely had a minute to think about it.”_

“That’s what newly leading a Department will do to you,” Bertha agreed and Agniesza offered a commiserating nod. “And transdisciplinary units require so much organizing –” 

“It’s those two who require so much organizing,” Agniesza quipped and took a seat opposite Bertha. “If we had a penny for every time one of them said, ‘but I don’t want to interfere with her career’, I wouldn’t need to go drinking with the Dean for student aide contracts!”

Philippe took the seat next to Agniesza. “Like when Eliane took that guest offer from Brown, and Joanna resigned and spent two semesters on research in Melbourne.”

“Melbourne,” Agniesza repeated, looking up at the ceiling in exasperation.

“On _research_.” Bertha mimicked grand air quotes.

“To be fair, Joanna only had a limited postdoc contract, and Eliane was never all that happy with how they had degraded her position after the transfer,” Brett tried to defend their friends, but Bertha would have none of that.

“Research in seething and sulking.”

“During the year we will not talk about,” Philippe added.

“She got that book out of it that got her the Berlin tenure,” Brett reminded them.

Bjarne nodded. “Can’t argue with that.”

“And then Eliane was wasn’t into the dual career plan,” Agniesza continued.

“…wasn’t equivalent,” Philippe chimed in, only to have Bjarne complete his phrase:

“…because Berlin simply has no narratology focus.”

Bertha threw up her hands in exasperation. “Why do we know this like the back of our hands?”

“Because they have acquired at least _some_ communication skills over the years?” Brett sighed.

“Could have fooled me,” Bertha added under her breath. “Much as I love them both.”

Brett took a seat next to Agniesza, briefly squeezing her hand under the table. “Joanna visited for a few weeks in autumn, before the semester began in Berlin.”

Bjarne gestured with his cake fork. “So it’s _not_ like when Darhayne was at Brown.” 

“Thank God,” Philippe agreed. “And to think people accuse me of being dramatic –”

“This is the point where Robert would have rolled his eyes at you,” Agniesza interrupted him, her teasing light, though Brett gave her a sharp worried, glance. “Fondly,” she added.

The mood teetered on its ledge for a moment, but then Philippe acquiesced with a nod. “He would have.” 

Into the quiet inhale of relief around the table, Agniesza’s phone buzzed again.

“This better not be Lil canceling,” Bertha threatened. “If she’s stranded in Eisenach, we will chip in for a cab before Joanna gets here, or she will ruin the party.”

Agniesza shook her head, her eyes still on her display. “Speaking of Joanna – she needs another fifteen minutes, and she says to start coffee without her.”

Bjarne groaned. “Those two are truly made for each other.” He eyed the Black Forest Cake residing on the elevated platter in the center of the table. “But that means cake, right? – This is definitely better than when Darhayne was at Brown.”

“Well, at least the Brown episode made them get married at last,” Agniesza interjected.

“Run off to Amsterdam, you mean,” Philippe corrected. “As I keep saying: they still owe us a party.”

“Please.” Bertha held up a hand. “I fully understand why they eloped. Imagine Joanna’s mother at your wedding!”

“No, thanks.” Bjarne shuddered.

Agniesza caught the look of patented patience that Adrian and Emma gave each other at the continued teasing among their parents’ group of friends. She cleared her throat. “On that note, does anyone want a slice of Black Forest and a cup of coffee?”

“Yes!” Both Bjarne and Bertha agreed immediately, but then something else on the table caught Bertha’s attention. “Oh, Agniesza, is that proper gianduja?”

“Compliments of Eleonora,” Agniesza said with a nod at the matte golden wrappers artfully stacked on a small, square plate. “With, and I quote, kisses to everyone: _baci a tutti_ ”

“I am kissing my fillings goodbye,” Bjarne declared, reaching for one of the delicacies and peeling of the wrapper. He looked at Philippe across the table. “Although of course this is just the nibbles before The Cake.”

Bertha gave Bjarne a sideways glance. “Do you even have someone who does fillings out in your neck of the woods?”

“Please don’t ask him that, or he will go into detail,” Brett muttered. She turned around and picked a holiday card from the nearby bookshelves. “This is Jeremy’s card, by the way. He says to videocall him at some point, or to at least sent him some footage of us singing something seasonal.”

“So he can turn it into another of his tracks to embarrass us next year,” Bjarne said, chewing. “Elf on the bossa nova shelf, or what was it last year?”

“Aren’t you living next to the elves now?” Bertha retorted, reading through the card with a smile and then reaching for a piece of gianduja herself. “At least Jeremy retired to somewhere sunny.”

“They’re weird, right?” Emma asked under her breath from where she had shyly placed herself on Bjarne’s other side. “It’s them, not us.”

“Definitely them,” Adrian agreed, his eyes on his plate as he waited for Agniesza to pass him a slice. “Not us.” He had cleared his plate even before Bjarne, Brett raising an eyebrow at his speed, while everyone around the table complimented a delighted Philippe on his baking skills.

Before Adrian could hold out his plate for a second helping, the doorbell rang again.

Brett swallowed around a mouthful of cake and addressed her son. “Could you get that, Adrian, please?”

Seeing that everyone else was still eating or in conversation, Adrian rose with a shrug.

“It’s Joanna,” he announced after checking the intercom, and now it was him sounding as little blasé as Emma had earlier.

By the time Joanna’s large, energetic steps had rounded the last landing, most everyone had ambled out into the hallway, though it was Adrian who stood by the door, and who received the first, brief hug when Joanna van de Kreek entered the apartment.

“Adrian! How are you?” She had to look up at him as she stepped back and quirked an eyebrow. “Your mothers must be running out of doorframe space to mark your height.”

Philippe looked on, leaning closer to Bertha when Adrian hastened to take Joanna’s overnight bag, a tint of color to his cheeks. “Joanna van de Kreek, making her colleagues’ kids blush since the start of the millennium.”

“Tried and true,” Bertha agreed with a chuckle. “Good to see some things don’t change.”

“Be careful about introducing Susanna to her,” Philippe added under his breath. “It might apply to grandchildren, too.”

But before Bertha could reply anything else, Joanna surveyed the assembly in the hallway with a large smile. “It’s so good to see you all.”

The smile couldn’t quite cover that her eyes looked exhausted behind her large, dark eye frames. She unbuttoned her down jacket and slipped out of low-heeled boots, at the same time pulling the sleeves of a comfortable looking gray knit back down to her wrists. The shirt collar peeking out underneath looked smooth, a warm green that contrasted the different hues of blonde in her hair, which was, at a closer look, threaded with first gossamer strings of gray. It curled over her shoulders, and as she now reached up to push it back, the small gold band on her right hand caught the reflection of the light for a moment.

Her gaze wandered over the over the people in the hallway, touching last on Agniesza and Brett in the background.

“Is she here yet?”

“Jo…” Brett shook her head with a fond smile. “She’s still on the train from Frankfurt. Didn’t she tell you?”

“My phone battery died,” Joanna admitted. “And the train WiFi was acting up.”

“How you head a Research Center with those communication skills…” Bjarne shook his head.

“Or lead a marriage,” Bertha added next to him, and then shrugged unapologetically at the glare Brett sent her way. Both of them remained where they were, though, and made room for Philippe who gave Joanna a long hug.

“I’ll get you my portable charger,” Adrian offered from the background.

Brett lifting an eyebrow at that, exchanging a look with Agniesza.

“We do have sockets, son,” she managed with a straight face. “And Joanna isn’t going anywhere for the next few days.”

“Look at you, stranger!” Philippe held Joanna at arm’s length with an admonishing look. “No more canceling concert tickets, understood?”

“Promise,” Joanna vowed, squeezing his arm. She smiled at him, a little tiredly.

“They sure wear you thin,” Bertha said with her usual candor and a scrutinizing look. Joanna didn’t protest when Bertha smothered her against her much sturdier frame for long moments, or when Bjarne threw an arm around her in addition.

“Not that you look bad for a professor,” he assured her.

“Research Center, head thereof,” Bertha corrected him. “In need of a week of sleep.”

“Ha, fat chance of that happening here,” Bjarne muttered under his breath, which made Agniesza slap his arm.

“For God’s sake, Bjarne.” She shooed him away. “Move. Let the Department Heads greet each other.”

“How is the Department?” Joanna asked immediately, looking at both Agniesza and Philippe.

“Jo,” Brett groaned. “At least have a coffee first.”

“Not all of us have changed to politics,” Joanna retorted. She enveloped Agniesza in her arms and held onto her for a second longer. “How is it going?” Her tone made it clear that she was not just asking about work.

“Good,” Agniesza said with a nod. Louder, she added, “You know. Same old.”

“She drank the Dean under the table – under the punch booth – today,” Philippe added, keeping the mood light. “For student aide contracts.”

Joanna let out a short laugh. “Same old, indeed.”

“That is what I said,” Bertha pointed out.

“And I still think she should have a coffee first,” Brett repeated and pulled Joanna into a hug of her own. “And if you’re lucky, this crowd has even left you a piece of cake.”

“Cake sounds perfect,” Joanna said with a sigh. “And coffee?”

“Probably not quite up to the Darhayne-van de Kreek axis of Black Death In Cups,” Brett quipped.

“All right, who wants seconds?” Bjarne asked, leading the way back towards the coffee table.

“Did someone watch Albrecht?” Philippe hurried after him. “No one give him any cake!”

“I cannot believe you haven’t been here since the summer,” Brett admonished Joanna, trailing behind with an arm still thrown around Joanna’s shoulders. “It’s not even two hours by train.”

“I know,” Joanna sighed. She gestured at her phone that she was plugging into the nearest socket in passing. “And I know it’s not the same on the phone. It’s just been crazy.”

“You said the same last year,” Brett reminded her.

“Last autumn I had only just started out!” Joanna protested. She shook her head with a rueful smile. “But you’re right. I just put all the leave I could take into days in Indiana –” She trailed off when they rounded the corner and a nervous Albrecht, tail wagging, looked between the cake and the newcomer from where he stood next to Emma, who held onto him.

“I take it back,” Joanna decided. “Sorry, Adrian, but someone has grown even more than you.” She addressed Albrecht directly. “When I last saw you, you were a mere puppy, and look at you now!”

“He still tries to pass for a puppy when he wants something,” Philippe said busily, while passing out seconds of cake. “You should have seen the look he gave me while I was decorating the cake!”

“The cake is amazing,” Bjarne promised, already chewing again, and Joanna looked up at Philippe in surprise.

“You cracked open the legendary dessert book?”

“I did.” Philippe patted the empty seat next to him. “So why don’t you sit down, _chérie_ , and give me your opinion?”

Joanna sat down and held out her plate, taking a deep breath as she looked around the room. Then she smiled.

...


	6. pt. 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Twenty years!
> 
> Where would their individual journeys have led Brett and Joanna, Bertha and Eliane, Agniesza, Philippe and even Bjarne over the past twenty years? - This is one glimpse at what might be "Campus", now.
> 
> (This isn't really a thing of chapters. It is one consecutive short story, posted in snippets because that is all work allows me. Unbetaed.)
> 
> (There is no plot. Just sweet nostalgia.)
> 
> (there is nothing to see in this installment, really. Just old friends peeling potatoes.)

**6**

_“The cake is amazing,” Bjarne promised, already chewing again, and Joanna looked up at Philippe in surprise._

_“You cracked open the legendary dessert book?”_

_“I did.” Philippe patted the empty seat next to him. “So why don’t you sit down,_ chérie _, and give me your opinion?”_

_Joanna sat down and held out her plate, taking a deep breath as she looked around the room. Then she smiled._

Two bites into her slice of excellent cake, her phone battery had charged enough to give off a series of discrete chirps out in the hallway, signaling a slew of incoming messages. Joanna had already half risen from her chair when Brett pointed a finger at her. “No more work today.”

“She’s past Erfurt.” Agniesza held up her own phone, which she had checked briefly underneath the table, and smothered a smile. “Less than an hour, now.”

“And that is all the information you need,” Brett addressed Joanna sternly. “Now take your seat and eat your cake!”

“You know it’s ‘no screens at the table’, Aunt Jo,” Adrian added with a grin, likewise around a second slice of Black Forest Cake.

Joanna glowered at Brett, but then relented. “Fine.” She settled back into her chair.

“Knowing you, you brought paperwork, anyway.” Brett said accusingly. “What is it – still the draft for that Endowment Professorship call at FU?”

“Oh, that’s done,” Joanna replied, pushing the cocktail cherry of her cake to the side with her fork. “I think.”

“You think?” Brett frowned. “I thought you were on the Advisory Board for that, and really invested in the position?”

Joanna speared another piece of cake with gusto, warmed by the absurdly pleased look Philippe sent her way. “I withdrew from the board.”

“Why?” Agniesza exclaimed. “You’re one of the experts, easily!”

Joanna shrugged, placing the fork down on her plate for a moment. “I have ties to one of the possible candidates.”

“I see,” Brett said carefully, wary of Joanna’s hopeful look. The one possible candidate she could think of had rejected a position in Berlin before.

“You could have been on the actual committee?” Bertha inquired. “You might have swayed the panel!”

“Promoting my wife?” Joanna asked pointedly.

“Well, perhaps not,” Bjarne conceded.

Agniesza nodded. “You’d have to withhold input due to bias. Better work on the call without officially being part of it.”

“If she’d even want it,” Joanna said with deceptive casualness.

Bertha sighed when no one spoke up in encouragement. “For a recovering Catholic, Lil sure has an unusual liking for penitence.” She looked around. “Speaking of faiths, where is my handbag? It’s about sunset.”

“Windowsill’s all yours,” Brett said with a smile, while she gestured for everyone to pass along their empty plates. “And I guess we could all use a break before the roast.”

“Can I take Albrecht for his walk?” Emma asked.

“Of course.” Philippe smiled at her. “Just let me give you the leash –“

“And take your phone with you,” Brett interjected, already half on her way into the kitchen. “And if one of the girls from your class wants to join you…”

“Ma.” Emma shook her head with a quiet sigh. “Albrecht and I will be fine.”

“And I’ll get the games,” Adrian decided, rubbing his hands together and ignoring his sister’s grimace. “Who’s up for a round of _Catan_?”

“Oh, someone thinks they stand a chance because Darhayne isn’t here yet,” Bjarne teased. “You better hurry as long as Daniels is busy with her menorah because then she will clean us out. Remember last year?”

“You do a warm-up round,” Bertha said with a laugh, while she carefully unwrapped a bundle of small candles. “And once Lil gets here, we’ll play for real.”

Joanna looked on a little forlornly. Emma and Philippe had disappeared with an excited Albrecht, Bjarne and Adrian were setting up the board game. Joanna decided to help Brett and Agniesza clean the table. Balancing a stack of plates in hand, she walked toward the kitchen, her steps inadvertently matching the rhythm of the grandfather clock in the corner. It had always been Agniesza’s and when she and Brett had moved into this apartment, back when most of them had still been at Leipzig University, it had been Brett and Joanna herself carrying it up the chairs, cursing under its weight, with Agniesza threatening them to be careful or else at every step.

Low voices stopped Joanna when she was just about to step around the kitchen door.

“And why do we have only one container of oat milk now?” Brett gestured at the open fridge and then closed it with a little more energy than strictly necessary. “It’s not just Emma this weekend, it’s Bjarne and Joanna, too!”

“I wrote it down,” Agniesza said defensively, nodding at the fridge as her hands were full of cups that she was trying to stack into the dishwasher. “Read the list, for a change?”

Brett bent closer to the post-its on the fridge. “Well, if you scribble it half underneath the magnet...!”

“The stores are open tomorrow, we’ll just get some more,” Agniesza decided, stacking a second row of cups upon the first as she ran out of space.

“Heading out before breakfast, great,” Brett complained. “Couldn’t you have thought of that after ‘Drinks with the Dean’?! – And that’s never going to wash out this way!”

Agniesza sat down the cups she still held onto with a multifold clang. “It’s not like I wanted to go drinking with him,” she snapped. “You do the list then. And load up the washer!”

Joanna looked with at the domestic squabble playing out in front of her and realized, with a bittersweet twinge, that she didn’t remember the last time she and Eliane had stacked a dishwasher together. Still, it had to have been after they had given up the shared Leipzig apartment. Perhaps it had been here, at Brett and Agniesza’s, last Christmas, or the year before last. Before Joanna could clear her throat to make herself noted, Brett had reached for Agniesza’s hand.

“Hey. I’m sorry.”

Brett bent down to press a kiss to Agniesza’s knuckles and then smoothed a thumb across the spot. “It’s just… We only have these two days, and then I remember what it was like when we were all together, and I want it to be perfect.” She scrunched up her nose, contrite. “And if I have to run to the store in the morning, I don’t get to have coffee in bed with you. And that’s my favorite thing about the holidays.”

Brett tugged on Agniesza’s hand, who allowed the pull of the movement and didn’t resist it.

“And here I thought it was stacking cups and plates to your liking,” she groused.

Brett waited, Joanna could see that, until Agniesza took a deep breath and then closed the gap between Brett and herself on her own. Agniesza reached out and lightly put her hands at Brett’s sides, a caress of fingertips before she leaned closer and placed her head against Brett’s shoulder, murmuring something that Joanna couldn’t hear. But she saw Brett complete the embrace, and as Agniesza tilted her head up, Brett pressed a very gentle kiss to her brow. Witnessing their shared smile, Joanna had to blink rapidly a few times. Then she cleared her throat and stepped into the kitchen.

“Hey, thanks!” Brett moved out of the embrace without hurry and took the plates out of Joanna’s hands. She stopped, looking at her a bit more closely when she noticed the shine to her eyes. “You okay?”

Joanna pushed the hair out of her face and nodded. “Just exhausted,” she said, unwilling to delve deeper.

“Berlin speed will do that to you.” Brett chuckled. “Guess why all the not-painfully-cool kids are moving back down here again!”

Agniesza reached up and brushed her hand along Brett’s neck to get her attention, an intimate gesture. “I’ll check whether Adrian has cleaned up his room enough to have Bjarne sleep in there tonight,” she said quietly. “And whether Emma has freed up the pull-out bed in her room already.”

“Thank you,” Brett murmured.

Through the open kitchen door fell a growing, warm glow from where Bertha was lighting the candles on the windowsill, chanting softly in prayer. Adrian and Bjarne had let go of the game plan and stood with her, as did Philippe.

“You know…” Joanna looked on as Agniesza stopped on her way to sort out the children’s rooms and smiled at the scene. “This is still perfect.”

Next to her, Brett sighed. “We never even knew how perfect it was, back then.”

“We were so busy fighting for the Department and our jobs, and just staying afloat, we never would have thought about it that way,” Joanna countered immediately. She sighed, as well. “When did the struggles and the short-term contracts turn into ‘the good old days’?”

“When we weren’t looking,” Brett surmised. “And then when we suddenly weren’t all in the same place any longer.” She lightly bumped her shoulder against Joanna’s. “But we got a decade of it, we can’t really complain.”

Out in the living room, Bertha had lit the eighth candle and was placing the shamash in its spot. 

“And we still get a slice of it, every year,” Joanna observed softly.

“The holiday reunion is non-negotiable,” Brett agreed. “Unless Bjarne manages to get himself arrested for tying himself to a pipeline.” She motioned at the counter. “Apropos slicing – care to give me a hand with the potatoes? Seeing as we probably won’t get our traditional hour out in the loggia tonight…”

Joanna wordlessly drew up a kitchen stool and accepted the peeler Brett handed her. “I brought my scarf and a jersey,” she protested. A longer chat among just the two of them, out in the dark, cool loggia among Brett’s plants, was also a non-negotiable part of their annual reunion.

“But do you really want to leave Agniesza and Eliane unsupervised when they get their hands on a deck of cards?” Brett opened the tap and let water run into the sink. Then she placed a bowl of potatoes between them, next to sheets of brightly printed, cheap ads to catch the peels. “Three months is a long time.”

“It is.” Joanna agreed. She reached for a potato and looked at the thin ribbon of peel she was producing.

“You should be with her,” Brett said gently. “Besides, you will be back here to visit before long. I hope.”

“I will,” Joanna promised, glancing over at Brett for a moment, her eyes more alert than they had been all afternoon. She held up a long, near translucent ribbon of peel. “God, this always reminds me of school. Being sent to the kitchen to help in retribution for something, and it was always peeling potatoes.”

“Good to see that finishing school of yours was good for something,” Brett quipped.

“It was not a finishing school!” Joanna protested. Then she canted her head to the side, just a bit. “Well, perhaps it was.” She looked over at Brett and took note of the deeper crease between her brows. “How’s the Party?” 

Brett shrugged. “You’ve seen the election results.”

“I’ve had them screamed into my ears in real-time, courtesy of Agniesza,” Joanna corrected her, dryly. “And I still managed to pick up a new curse or two in Hungarian, which I thought impossible at this point.”

Brett dropped one peeled potato into the sink where it bobbed in the water she had drawn. Then she reached for another one. “When did you see her?”

For a second, Joanna pondered willfully misunderstanding the question, miffed that Brett still could read her tension so easily. “I visited in September. Nearly all of September. But then semester has been crazy –”

“When isn’t it?” Brett asked wryly. “Well, not that city council works much differently.”

Joanna rubbed her starch-coated fingertips together. “It feels as if I am always waiting for her,” she admitted quietly. “Always a little bit more than she would. I don’t think that will ever change.”

“What won’t change is that she is just as bull-headed and proud as you are,” Brett pointed out. “And unwilling to owe anyone anything.”

“I think she would have a really good shot at the FU Endowment Chair,” Joanna said, focusing on the next potato in her grasp. “If she wants it.”

“If she wants it,” Brett echoed.

“Speaking of the FU.” Joanna changed the topic. “Is Adrian still thinking about applying?”

“He is.” Brett couldn’t keep the small, proud smile out of her voice. “After a gap year in South America, that is. Giving Agniesza a conniption.”

“Are you sure that’s Agniesza and not you?” Joanna muttered, but then she tapped her knuckles against the counter in thought. “He could do one of those three-months internships? And then still enroll in autumn? And he could always do an Erasmus+ year later.” She caught the grateful look Brett threw her way. “I will try to have a proper godmother mentoring talk with him while I’m here.”

“Eliane will stay with you for a while longer, won’t she?”

“Nearly three weeks.” Joanna couldn’t help the small, happy smile that stole across her features at that and Brett thought that some things would probably never change. “Exhibitions, concerts, a book launch or two, and winter walks in the Botanic Garden. And a few days up at the Baltic Sea in a cabin. But that is a surprise.”

“Exhibitions and book launches are lovely…” Brett drew out the phrase, unconvinced.

“…but so are the beach and a bed!” Joanna said with enough impatience to make Brett laugh.

...


	7. pt. 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Twenty years!
> 
> Where would their individual journeys have led Brett and Joanna, Bertha and Eliane, Agniesza, Philippe and even Bjarne over the past twenty years? – This is one glimpse at what might be “Campus”, now.
> 
> (This isn’t really a thing of chapters. It is one consecutive short story, posted in snippets because that is all work allows me. Unbetaed.)
> 
> (There is no plot. Just sweet nostalgia. And one last arrival to the party.)

**7**

_“Eliane will stay with you for a while longer, won’t she?”_

_“Nearly three weeks.” Joanna couldn’t help the small, happy smile that stole across her features at that and Brett thought that some things would probably never change. “Exhibitions, concerts, a book launch or two, and winter walks in the Botanic Garden. And a few days up at the Baltic Sea in a cabin. But that is a surprise.”_

_“Exhibitions and book launches are lovely…” Brett drew out the phrase, unconvinced._

_“…but so are the beach and a bed!” Joanna said with enough impatience to make Brett laugh._

“Possessive much?” She tossed another potato into the sink.

“Oh yes,” Joanna said fervently.

Brett raised an eyebrow at her. “Dare I say some time on your back might do you good.”

It was testament to Joanna’s level of frustration that she didn’t even protest the blunt suggestion. “Her, as well,” she added, gesturing with her peeler. Another potato landed in the sink, bobbing next to the others. “Though she complained about being confined to too much rest on her back already, with the knee surgery.”

“A cabin out of nowhere is an excellent place to reconsider that stance,” Brett pointed out. “And that goes for both of you.”

Joanna tipped her head back for a moment and looked up at the ceiling. “God, she would only have to ask!” She laughed, a little embarrassed by her own frankness. “I keep thinking of her and I just want her to –” She shook head und muttered, “Until I cannot even _think_.”

Two moments of silence ticked by. “Well.” Brett cleared her throat, but she was grinning at Joanna with it. “If Joanna van de Kreek wants to stop thinking... Isn’t that unheard of?”

“I’ve been trying to figure out a way to split the leadership of the Center,” Joanna said after another moment, another thin peel curling downwards as her hands worked. “Not just with a substitute, but to lead it as a team of two or three.”

“But it’s your project, and you’ve put so much work into it!” Brett objected. “More than anyone else on that board. You deserve the credit!”

“Lately, it feels as if that is all I am doing any longer.” Joanna tossed another potato into the sink, a few drops of water splashing onto the counter with it.

Brett was silent for a few seconds. “I get it,” she offered then. “They asked me to move up into the Regional Council. Just the other week. I could be on the list for the next elections. Statewide.”

Joanna gaped at her friend. “That is fantastic!”

“I said no,” Brett said soberly.

“But you could reach more people…” Joanna frowned. “Didn’t you run because of that?”

“I have a family." Brett shrugged. “I can’t do that to them. I want to enjoy the last few years with the kids at home. And I don’t want to invite even more attacks.”

“How is Emma?” Joanna asked immediately.

“Good,” Brett nodded. “She is good.”

Again, there was a silence for a minute as the number of potatoes in the sink grew.

“Philippe seems better,” Joanna ventured.

“He is,” Brett allowed. “He is trying very hard. Sometimes too hard. And he still gets days where he withdraws completely or reverts to ire stage, but it is not every day any longer.” She nodded at Joanna. “It takes time.”

But Joanna had stopped collecting peels and stared instead at something behind Brett. “Why are we peeling potatoes when there is a perfectly good potato salad already sitting on the counter?”

Brett turned her head and looked at the bowl Emma had worked on in the morning. “The family council couldn’t decide between potato salad and gratin as a side dish, so there will be both.” She stood and wiped her hands on a dishtowel. “And you bet there will be actual heavy cream and porcini mushrooms in this one, or else.”

“Delicious!” Joanna decreed.

Brett gave her a bemused look. “It’s your old recipe. – You know Agniesza loves it.”

“It is? – I barely get to cook any longer,” Joanna confessed. “I am usually just so tired, and there’s always work… I barely see anything any longer. I didn’t even catch the Garden of Earthly Delights exhibit at Gropius!”

“Even I saw that!” Brett shook her head at Joanna. “Jo. You need to work less, and sleep.” She let the water gurgle down the drain and gave Joanna a pointed look over her shoulder. “Also, you need to get laid.”

Joanna sighed. “Tell _her_ that.” When Brett remained standing, looking at her, she relented. “The last few years did put a dent into things. She wasn’t comfortable –”

“But you said she’s through with menopause, right?” Brett tried to clarify. “As much as one can be through with it. And you are still on the other side.”

“It’s a divide,” Joanna acknowledged. She fidgeted on her kitchen stool. “More for her, I think.”

“Bridge it,” Brett said sagely. “And for God’s sake, talk to her about it!” Something else occurred to her. “If you could arrange to split directorship…. Doesn’t the FU also have a seat on that board?”

“Yeees,” Joanna said slowly. Then she waved off the unspoken suggestion behind Brett’s question. “Please. They would never put two Humanities scholars in charge at the same time. Lord knows I only got in because my Performance Theory PhD had an empirical part.”

Brett pursed her lips. “Still,” she insisted.

“Still,” Joanna agreed after a beat. She looked on as Brett pulled the kitchen machine into the center of the counter, then dug an elaborate cylinder out of a cupboard and mounted it to the side of the machine.

“She’s too expensive for a regular professorship at this point,” Joanna said. She watched Brett place a large bowl underneath the opening of the cylinder. “No public university would buy out her pension funds. She already accepted cuts to take on Bloomington, but another transfer… She could really only do an Endowment Chair, or private education.”

Brett, still bent over the extension of the kitchen machine, looked up at her quizzically. “I thought her father left her pretty well off?”

“Somewhat,” Joanna allowed. “Although she puts quite a bit of it into her mother’s care.”

“But that also won’t last forever,” Brett said pragmatically. She frowned, listening after her own words. “Unless your mother is Mrs. Silberstein, of course.”

“Who will outlive us all,” Joanna agreed.

“Are you talking about Bertha’s mother again?”

Philippe glanced into the kitchen, having caught the last bit of their exchange.

“Whom else?” Brett chuckled. “Thank you for letting Emma go with Albrecht.”

“I think that warrants more of a thanks to you,” Philippe observed gently, before he moved towards the fridge and opened the door to survey three rows of perfectly aligned ramekins. “Well, and to me because it means we all get a small break from you complaining about Emma carrying a small torch for Bjarne.”

“I am not that bad,” Brett protested.

“And she really could do worse,” Philippe added.

Joanna shook her head. “It is surreal.”

“Ha!” Brett straightened. She gestured at Joanna “Thank you.” Then she looked at Philippe. “Close that fridge door, for God’s sake!”

“I need to rotate them,” Philippe declared, pushing a small tray of ramekins at Joanna. “Here, hold that. Please.”

“I’ll get the other extension from the pantry,” Brett muttered and left Joanna and Philippe to their own devices.

“This looks about right.” Philippe tapped a finger against a ramekin, checking the consistency of the custard by its movement. “You know what I listened to the other day? The Norman Légrand album!”

“That one!” Joanna smiled fondly. “I listened to some of it again, after the news of her passing.”

“It was our first concert,” Philippe remembered.

Joanna adjusted her awkward grip on the tray when Philippe added more ramekins. “Back when Jeremy was still here.”

“Back when everyone was still here.” Philippe’s expression seemed brittle for a moment, but then he shook his head. “I am sorry.”

Joanna would have placed a hand on his arm, had she not had her hands occupied. “I remember you getting me that outfit. And the two of you dressing me up for the Faculty Ball!”

“We schemed until you two finally got your wits together,” Philippe added with a nod. “At least temporarily.”

Joanna sighed, her tone light. “And here I thought I would get a break from the teasing…”

The sound of the doorbell rang through the apartment. Joanna, her hands full, remained rooted to the spot.

“Can one of you get that?” Agniesza called out

Bertha threw a quick glance at the kitchen and Joanna’s predicament. “You bet,” she muttered then, walking down the hallway. “A video intercom? Posh!” She pressed the button. “It’s Lil!”

When Bertha opened the apartment door a minute later, Eliane Darhayne was already leaning against the doorframe with an elbow, gesturing loosely with a hand that sported a small gold band.

“Daniels!” Eliane said with a grin. “I hear you’re harboring a wife of mine in here?”

...


	8. pt. 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Twenty years!
> 
> Where would their individual journeys have led Brett and Joanna, Bertha and Eliane, Agniesza, Philippe and even Bjarne over the past twenty years? – This is one glimpse at what might be “Campus”, now.
> 
> (This isn’t really a thing of chapters. It is one consecutive short story, posted in snippets because that is all work allows me. Unbetaed.)
> 
> (snippet count adjusted again. If the original Campus could have 13 chapters, so can this holiday celebration.)
> 
> Side note: I will ignore comments that intrusively and inappropriately project a reaction to my writing onto my author persona, or my assumed private life. Confounding the line between creator and creation is not cute or charming. It is creepy.

**8**

_When Bertha opened the apartment door a minute later, Eliane Darhayne was already leaning against the doorframe with an elbow, gesturing loosely with a hand that sported a small gold band._

_“Daniels!” Eliane said with a grin. “I hear you’re harboring a wife of mine in here?”_

Bertha raised a steep eyebrow. “How many of those are you keeping? Just for the record.” She peered at Eliane more closely. “Some nice circles you’ve got under eyes there, by the way. You seem to be doing splendidly without her.”

“I’d be worried if I slept as well next to some strangers on a plane.” Eliane pushed loose from the doorframe. “Let me come in first before you start laying into me?”

“Some parts of Britain are still upstanding,” Bertha said haughtily, but then she reached out to hug Eliane. “It’s really good to see you, Lil.”

“I hope that means we’ll get our traditional hour of scotch and politics later?”

“I’m not sure there’s enough scotch in the world for that,” Bertha groused. “What a year it has been, hasn’t it?”

“On both sides of the pond,” Eliane agreed. Then she craned her neck to look past Bertha and down the hallway. “Is everyone still having coffee?”

“Your Mrs. is in the kitchen,” Bertha said, pulling back. “Philippe is making her sous-chef of his elaborate dessert, I believe?”

Eliane quickly slipped out of her coat and hung it on the rack, before she rolled a large suitcase through the still open door.

“Someone has extended holiday plans,” Bertha observed. “Unless half of that is books and student essays.”

“I brought you the Grimley you asked for,” Eliane said in reply while she removed her shoes. They were flat-soled, too elegant to be called sneakers, but a bit more cushioned that standard loafers.

“If there’s one thing we’ve earned at this point, it’s the right to comfortable shoes,” she said, a tad defensively, at catching Bertha’s look.

“That’s not comfortable, dear,” Bertha said dryly. “That’s still ‘fit for Paris’, and you know it.”

“I need to be more careful,” Eliane said with regret, though she still moved lithely, even with her frame broadened a bit by the years. It was echoed in the lines of her face, its angles softened, but still lined by auburn hair almost same shade it had been for as long as Bertha had known her. It was long enough that Eliane could put it up again, which she had done for traveling. Though Bertha guessed it hadn’t been a decision of comfort: the trousers Eliane wore were too narrow in cut for that, her shawl collar blouse too delicate.

“Careful, you say?” Bertha remarked with another eyebrow raise.

“Or not.” Eliane squared her shoulders with a grin. “Right now, you’re the last thing standing between me and Joanna, whom I haven’t seen in three months. I will deck you if I have to.”

Bertha smiled comfortably. “I’d like to see you try.” But she stepped aside, just as voices rang out down the hallway.

“Jo! Drop those ramekins and head out here!” Brett ordered, stepping out of one of the children’s rooms.

“Don’t even think of dropping those ramekins!” Philippe protested immediately in the background. “Give me that. Carefully! – And now shoo, head out there!”

Bertha saw Joanna hurry down the corridor towards them, her large strides even larger now. The aloofness that always clung to her like a layer of skin shifted when she saw Eliane, and even though she wasn’t smiling as widely, the warmth that suddenly lit up her expression softened her entire demeanor.

Bertha had seen it time and again over the years, yet the display still gave her pause, just as Eliane, instead, seemed to quieten as Joanna approached, her perpetual restlessness tempered with calm.

They met in long hug, simply holding onto each other.

Bertha smothered a smile and looked away from the intimate moment, as did the others who had come ambling out into the hallway and now found instead a frame photo on the wall or a forgotten, bunched up sports sock on the floor to look at.

Joanna finally drew back, her arms still around Eliane, her eyes darting over all the small details of Eliane’s face, the quirk of her lips, the curve of her lashes, the creases lining her brow.

“Why did you even bother with lipstick?” she complained softly before she leaned in and brushed her lips against the corner of Eliane’s mouth, mindful of the carefully painted, glossy shade of subdued red.

“Perhaps I wanted to look good,” Eliane muttered, the playful note of petulance covering up any insecurity lingering underneath.

“As if that would take lipstick,” Joanna sighed under her breath, perhaps too quiet to be heard at all. She stepped back at uneven tapping against the door, followed by the turn of a key in the lock.

An excited Albrecht bounded back into the apartment, his paws nearly free of dirt, followed by Emma, who had the leash dangling from her neck, her cheeks pink from the winter cold. 

“Emma!”

Once more, the squirming teenager was the center of attention, this time Eliane’s.

Joanna, meanwhile, glanced at the heavy suitcase in the corner. “Did you lug that up the stairs on your own?”

“I am not an invalid,” Eliane retorted, which made Bertha roll her eyes and toss a glance in Joanna’s direction, but then something else captured Eliane’s attention. “And this is Albrecht?”

“The one and only,” Philippe said from the hallway where he was surveying the scene together with Brett and Agniesza. Eliane knelt down, a little stiffly, and scratched a delighted Albrecht behind the ears, and Philippe smiled in delight when he saw how she did not give a damn about getting dog hair on her elegant outfit.

“Where is Adrian?” Eliane asked, looking up while she kept petting Albrecht. “And Bjarne? He didn’t get himself arrested again, I hope?”

“Haha, Darhayne.” Bjarne grumbled, standing in the door to the living room. “Daniels already beat you to that joke today.”

“It still holds up,” Bertha observed, and Eliane nodded.

“It does.”

Behind Bjarne, Adrian came into view.

“Eliane!”

“They are entertaining the illusion they could beat us at _Catan_ ,” Bertha commented from where she stood.

“Oh, sweet ingenuity,” Eliane drawled, a spark in her eyes. She rubbed her hands. “Care to put that theory to a test, boys?”

“No damaging the property,” Brett pleaded, barely getting in a brief hug in greeting.

“Not that we aren’t glad that you finally made it,” Agniesza added, the hug she gave Eliane a little longer and a little more cordial.

“I will ask you later how the Department is doing,” Eliane warned. “Your Department,” she corrected herself.

“Remind us to tell you a story about the Dean at the punch booth,” Philippe said, while Albrecht pushed himself against his legs.

“Coffee first?” Agniesza asked with a smile.

“Coffee, and showing these youngsters here how to do strategy,” Eliane proclaimed, putting a hand on Adrian’s arm in passing.

“Will there be tears?” Brett muttered, worriedly.

Joanna gave her a wry nod. “Probably.”

But when Brett, half an hour later, took a peek into the living room, it was to a triumphant Adrian, offering “Two wool, but only against a grain and an ore!” while he held up his cards.

“You mean a grain _or_ an ore,” Eliane said smoothly, giving Adrian her best commanding stare.

Adrian didn’t budge. “Did you say a _single_ wool against a grain and an ore?”

Behind him, Emma was cheering, despite having claimed disinterest in the game earlier. She was seated on the arm of the couch, with Albrecht curled up at her feet on his blankets. Bjarne groaned at the offered deal, while Bertha, on the arm chair, kept her poker face.

“Hm.” Eliane leaned forward, resting her chin on her stapled fingers. “I think I said three wool. Didn’t I?”

Adrian shifted in his seat. “Two,” he maintained after a beat.

Next to Eliane, Joanne discreetly brushed a hand along her shoulder before she leaned back against the couch, content to follow the game quietly.

Without taking her eyes off Adrian and his offer, Eliane picked up her cards with one hand. With the other, she reached back, placing a hand on Joanna’s thigh.

“Two wool, and an option to trade again next round.” 

A small smile played about Joanna’s lips as Adrian and Eliane exchanged the cards in question.

“My prodigy,” Elaine declared proudly when the dice passed to Bertha. “Don’t forget I taught him!”

Brett, still standing in the doorway, covered her face with a hand. “How could I forget,” she sighed under her breath.

“Be glad that he gets some street-savviness from somewhere.” Agniesza had appeared next to her and gently drew the hand away from Brett’s face, catching it in her own. She slowly slid her fingers between Brett’s larger ones, intentionally enough to distract Brett from the scene of the board game. “Time to set the table again,” she remarked and then smiled fondly when Brett blinked at her, not having processed a word of her sentence.

Joanna had caught sight of them and stood up from the couch. “I assume you could use another hand in the kitchen?”

Brett and Agniesza exchanged a quick look when Joanna walked ahead of them.

Agniesza shook her head. “At least it’s not Melbourne this time.”

Brett glanced back at Eliane on the couch who was now bartering Bjarne out of his stock of ore. “Do we need to place one of the relaxation candles in the guest room?”

“Depends.” Agniesza tossed her a look. “How good is our fire insurance, again?”

“Ladies, where do you keep that meat thermometer I gave you this summer?” Philippe called from the kitchen.

Brett leaned in the direction of the kitchen without letting go of Agniesza’s hand. “Oh, that was a meat thermometer? I thought –”

“Darling.” Agniesza gave her an admonishing look.

“That’s why it doesn’t work for my balcony plants!” Brett continued. “It’s a roast, Philippe. Just take a fork!”

“Culinary heathens!” Philippe huffed over the sound of drawers being opened. “Both of you!”

“Thank you for leaving me out of it.” Joanna’s dry tones drifted out into the hallway.

“You...” Another drawer was opened and thrown shut again. “You probably have last done a roast on your own when you were still a lowly postdoc!”

“I couldn’t afford posh roasts when I was a lowly postdoc,” Joanna pointed out. “Much less a meat thermometer.”

A delicious smell wafted over into the living room; Philippe had likely opened the oven door. “And when you married a professor, you eloped and nobody got any roast!”

Brett winced at the jab.

“…and nobody got to put a meat thermometer on the wedding list?” Joanna came back into view, unfazed, carrying dinner plates and cutlery.

“There are vegetarians in the house,” Emma complained from the couch, her cadence an exact echo of Agniesza’s. “Please.”

Albrecht, drawn in by the smells of food or his master’s voice, moved closer to the kitchen.

“Wait, Albrecht, what’s that?” Emma followed him while Joanna set the table. “Stop that! Out! – God, Adrian, do you really have to keep your socks flying around everywhere?!”

“I didn’t –” Adrian tried to protest, but his focus was still on the game, where Bertha had just pulled ahead of everyone.

“He could have hurt himself!” Emma said indignantly.

“That smell would make anyone chew on something,” Bjarne defended Albrecht.

Philippe appeared in the doorway with a food tray. “Is that a compliment, or would you like some socks for dinner?”

Agniesza leaned back against Brett with a sigh between aggravated and contented. “Why do we keep inviting them back?”

Brett chuckled, close to her ear. “Because this is perfect.”

...


	9. pt. 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Twenty years!
> 
> Where would their individual journeys have led Brett and Joanna, Bertha and Eliane, Agniesza, Philippe and even Bjarne over the past twenty years? – This is one glimpse at what might be “Campus”, now.
> 
> (This isn’t really a thing of chapters. It is one consecutive short story, posted in snippets because that is all work allows me. Unbetaed.)

**9**

_Agniesza leaned back against Brett with a sigh between aggravated and contented. “Why do we keep inviting them back?”_

_Brett chuckled, close to her ear. “Because this is perfect.”_

Bjarne moved to stand. “A toast to the roast!”

“I cannot believe that we can think about food again already,” Joanna said, even as she continued to set the table.

“You say that every year,” Brett said conversationally. She opened a cupboard in search of napkins. “And then you eat more than I do.”

“Five minutes, are you about done with the game?” Agniesza called out. “And wash your hands, whether I raised you or not!”

Emma and Adrian looked at each other with similar versions of the same eyeroll.

“Bertha just beat everyone, Mom,” Adrian sighed.

“Again,” Emma added gleefully.

Bertha shrugged, a picture of studied nonchalance. “Sheer luck.”

“You also say that every year,” Brett pointed out.

“For a toast to the roast, we need a drink.” Eliane also uncoiled from the coach.

“And haven’t I got just the thing.” Philippe looked up from here he was still fussing over the casserole with the roast. “A Languedoc-Roussillon Minervois. Château du Donjon.”

Eliane ambled over. “Mainly Grenache?” She guessed, intrigued. “Or Carignan…?”

“Let’s do the honors?” Philippe suggested, leaving Joanna to look after him and Eliane with a fond shake of her head as they disappeared around the corner in direction of the kitchen.

“Something with a bit more garrigue,” Philippe explained. “I thought it might be worth trying with the roast, given the root vegetables…” He trailed off, startled by Eliane’s sharp glance.

“You sound just like him,” she observed. “Pardon me for saying so.”

Philippe exhaled, slowly. “But he is not here any longer.”

“And yet he is,” Eliane said, with warmth to her tone. “This is him.”

Philippe busied himself with checking the temperature of the bottles on the window sill and then reached for the corkscrew. “I know.” He drew out the knife and screw in one practiced movement. “And it’s a patronizing thing to say, not matter how true it is. – Or how good it still feels to hear.”

Elaine acknowledged the reply with a nod. “He might have chosen a Bandol, though,” she added quietly, after a moment.

“He just might,” Philippe allowed. He worked the first cork, putting strength into the movement. Oblivious of the momentary tension, Joanna strode back into the kitchen.

“We need another fork and knife, and Adrian has asked for a wine glass.”

Philippe looked up and shared quick glance with Eliane. “I know why he asked you and not his mothers,” he said over his shoulder. “I would hear the protests already!”

Eliane’s lip quirked. “At least he is not asking for a beer glass.”

“Ah!” Philippe gestured with the removed cork. “See, you realize the actual priorities here.”

He looked on as Joanna stepped closer, prompting Eliane to move away, first from the box with the holiday cutlery on the counter, then from the cupboard with the wine glasses.

“That must be why they keep making her Department Head,” Joanna said wryly, looking at Philippe and not at Eliane as she said it.

Something in Philippe’s gaze shattered when she walked out again, glass and cutlery in hand, without having brushed against Eliane even once. “She is right here,” he murmured, more to himself.

Eliane stepped up next to him and accepted the bottle of wine he handed her, though only after he had carefully tied a starched napkin around its neck “I know.”

Emma barged into the kitchen. “Albrecht wants his dinner!”

“No cake,” Philippe replied automatically.

“I think it is more about the roast,” Emma offered, but Philippe was already reaching for a bag to the side while Emma reached for a dog bowl from a low cupboard. They were a team Eliane wasn’t part of, and she was well aware of it as she walked out with the first bottle of wine.

Joanna had ended up between Brett and Adrian, who was eyeing the gratin on the table with distrust despite its mouthwatering scent.

“Why are there mushrooms in the potatoes?”

“Those are not mushrooms, those are porcini mushrooms,” Agniesza said in her patented professor voice. “And you’re free to have potato salad instead of the gratin.”

“And a glass of wine…?” Adrian asked hopefully.

“You’re barely eighteen!” Brett protested.

“As if he wouldn’t have a beer with his pals now and then,” Agniesza said under her breath. “Not that we need to know about it.”

“A small sip for the young man who just out-strategized my wife at _Catan_?” Joanna suggested in a conciliatory manner.

“Bertha still won,” Adrian pointed out, even as he sat up straighter.

“Just tell him the gratin is Joanna’s recipe,” Bertha replied instead, and Adrian promptly blushed. He corrected the grip on his glass, trying to emulate Eliane’s instead when Joanna poured him a small amount of wine and pretended not have heard the jibe. 

Eliane sat down next to Bertha, resigning herself to the fact that she would have to content herself with looking at Joanna across the table for the duration of the dinner instead of reaching for her hand underneath it. Bjarne had rolled up his sleeves some more to cut up the roast.

“Don’t you do that every day with some reindeer or other?” Bertha said, while she presented him with the utensils, and Emma, who had seen to Albrecht’s dinner, muttered something about vegetarians and Christmas spirit that had her mothers exchange a glance with a raised eyebrow.

“Another year, and we are all here!” Brett said with a smile, and the toast was echoed around the table. Eliane met Joanna’s eyes with her own, briefly, over the rim of their glasses, among the sound of clinking crystal, and then she couldn’t tear her gaze away from Joanna’s face again, from the hair falling over her shoulders, from the soft curve of her lips and the arch of her brow.

“So, you will be staying in Berlin for a bit, Eliane?” Agniesza asked as she set down her glass.

“Three weeks.” Eliane leaned back in her chair with a broad smile, easily commanding the table. “That’s the advantage of long-distance living arrangements. Everything that is not at a distance is a vacation!”

“In Berlin?” Bertha looked doubtful. “Don’t you want to head somewhere Southern, into the sun?”

“Climate!” Brett, Emma and Bjarne chorused, and Philippe shook his head.

“Flights into the sun are unutterable as a concept in this household.”

“Please, as if they would even leave the house, no matter where they go,” Bertha said dryly. “You could probably drop them in Braunlage in February and they wouldn’t even notice.”

“Now that’s a little harsh,” Philippe protested, but his laugh was strained.

A muscle around Joanna’s mouth twitched, and she looked straight ahead for a few seconds. 

“I just want a few weeks of home,” Eliane said smoothly. “And Berlin is perfect for that.”

“Home generally is that thing that is not a vacation,” Bertha breathed next to her. “Funny, isn’t it?”

“Could I get another slice of this?” Bjarne held out his plate to Agniesza.

“The wine was an excellent choice.” Eliane raised her glass in direction of Philippe, but her attention strayed again to the side in a moment of dazed yearning, to Joanna who had raised her own glass to her lips just then.

Bertha leaned a little closer. “Will you even need dessert later?”

Eliane sighed. “It’s not that easy.”

“Actually, it is.” Bertha dabbed at her lips with her napkin. “Philippe made crème brûlée.”

“He did?” Eliane whispered, surprised, but before talk turned to dessert again, slice after slice of roast disappeared and Adrian grudgingly admitted that even the porcini mushrooms in the gratin were palatable, although Brett still made sure that he didn’t get another glass of the second bottle of wine with it, and neither of the third.

Most of the platters were cleared when even Bjarne declared, “I cannot eat another bite.”

“Give me a minute.” Philippe stood up. “Emma, it’s time for the miniature blowtorch!”

The pair disappeared into the kitchen, with Albrecht curiously trailing behind, though he returned moments later. The soft clang of china carried over to the dining table from the kitchen, followed by Emma’s excited voice and the sharp hiss of the torch.

Agniesza turned around in her seat. “If you singe my cupboard fronts, there will be retributions!”

“When we had to sand then, they were _my_ cupboard fronts,” Brett huffed, and from the way Agniesza shifted, Eliane could see that she placed a hand on Brett’s thigh in reaction. Their shoulders nearly brushed together and Brett smiled, mollified, but then Emma and Philippe stood in the door with a flourish, carrying between them a tray of gleaming white ramekins that each glittered with a hardened crust of caramel.

“I stand corrected,” Bjarne said into the sudden silence and reached for his dessert spoon. “I can still eat some of that.”

Murmurs welled up around the table as the ramekins were passed around, Philippe and Emma helping out with an oven mitten each.

“Wait, wait –” Eliane raised her spoon. “This calls for some coordinated appreciation!”

“One!” Brett counted, and the rest of the table joined her. “Two. Three!”

A collective crackle sounded around the table as the brittle layer of sugar gave way to the metal of a spoon nice times, baring the creamy depths underneath.

Joanna was the first one to speak.

“Oh God, Philippe. Mhmm.”

The small moan froze Eliane with her spoon half on her way to her mouth, transfixed. Heat rushed up her insides and pooled in her throat, beating against the cold softness of the flan as she finally managed to balance a first bite into her mouth.

Bjarne nodded. “This…” He spoke with his mouth still full. “This is just like Robert’s.”

“No. - That crack?” Bertha tapped the broken surface of her flan again and listened after the sound with a shake of her head. “It’s a little thicker, even. Perfect!”

For a minute, no one spoke. 

“He would be so proud,” Brett then said, softly.

“Including the bit where you are turning our daughter into an arsonist,” Agniesza added with a sigh, but her smile was brilliant. “Thank you for making this.”

“A toast to Robert!” Eliane raised her glass. “Who, just like his excellent desserts, will always be a part of us!”

Philippe dipped his head when he and Eliane touched their glassed together, a flush to his cheeks and a tremulous smile to his lips.

“Remember the year you two couldn’t get that special sugar and we had to take a rental out to the mall in the evening rush?” Bjarne asked, although he didn’t stop eating while he spoke.

One anecdote led to another, even when they left the dinner table and returned once more to the coffee table, where upended wooden structures and play cards were still strewn about. Brett and Agniesza were quietly clearing the table. Eliane, this time, had ended up next to Joanna, who was perched on the arm of the couch at her side and balanced herself with a hand on the cushions at Eliane’s back.

“Drinks with the Dean, even if it’s bad drinks, is still preferable to that time we were on a faculty retreat with Freytag and had to do one of these team-building walks.” Eliane was saying just then. She shook her head at the memory. “After miserable breakfast coffee!”

“Well, let’s just say that he was not willing to cross the rope bridge a second time with us on the way back,” Bertha added with a grin and raised her water glass. She had discretely opened a small pill container and was taking medication on the side.

Eliane leaned back towards Joanna in the shared laughter. “Would you mind if I talked to Daniels for a bit, later?”

“Me, interfering with your annual scotch date with Bertha?” Joanna chuckled. “Of course not. You barely see each other these days. And we have nearly three weeks ahead.”

Brett had overheard the exchange and leaned closer to Agniesza as they carried out empty platters between them. “We better give Joanna something to do while Bertha and Eliane go about their traditional scotch hour, or she might stomp holes into the floor.”

“There is enough dishwashing to do, at least,” Agniesza observed as she glanced around the kitchen surfaces, trying to find an empty spot for the last platter in her grasp. “Besides, it’s Joanna. She probably smuggled in some paperwork.”

“For a hot session of essay grading with Darhayne later?” Brett closed an open drawer with her hip. “Those two are still just as hopeless.”

“I have a stack of essays I could read to you in my underwear,” Agniesza suggested with a laugh. She unceremoniously placed the platter she had been carrying on top of a few haphazardly stacked plates where it promptly threatened to topple the entire construction. With her hands no free, she pulled Brett closer, who didn’t resist.

“But why would we need essays?” Brett murmured. She still had her hands full. “Or underwear?”

Agniesza wasn’t laughing any longer when she leaned in and kissed Brett for long, blissful seconds, with their mouth still tasting of sweet flan.

Brett deposited whatever she had been carrying into the sink without even looking. “Dessert tastes even better this way.”

Agniesza wrapped her arms around Brett, trailing fingers up her back in a light caress. “You think that was your actual dessert?” she asked.

“Do you want head back down to the cellar?” Brett murmured, her voice rich with suggestion.

“To the cellar?” Bjarne walked in behind them with another few plates and glasses. “At this hour? What would you even want there?”

“Get some potatoes,” Bett managed with a straight face as she took a step back, though only a small one.

“Hash browns, for breakfast tomorrow?” Agniesza prompted when Bjarne kept looking at them without understanding.

“Why think of potatoes when there still is this?” He lifted the cover off the remnant of the Black Forest cake from the afternoon and helped himself to another, albeit small, slice.

All seats around the coffee table were taken when Bjarne walked back in the living room. “Move,” he addressed Philippe, who had carved out a couch corner for himself, and then squeezed in next to him on the couch while balancing his dessert plate. “And if you want to complain that I’m taking up too much room, I will remind you that it was you who stuffed us with crème brûlée.”

Philippe gave him a blank stare. “You are having another piece of cake as you speak,” he pointed out.

“Not my fault if it’s great,” Bjarne replied and pushed Philippe to the side with his own frame. “Now move.”

Across the table, Eliane caught Philippe’s startled look. She had shifted closer to Joanna who was just then animatedly discussing Mapuche art with Adrian, and Eliane was wondering idly whether this scenario would be the same if Adrian was their son, nor Brett’s and Agniesza’s, or if he would have turned out differently. Philippe’s expression, somewhere between delight and embarrassment, shook Eliane out of her reverie in recognition. It was likely the first time in weeks, perhaps even months, that a reasonably attractive man had come this close to Philippe, addressing him in a teasing way that could be construed as flirting. It was a sensation familiar to Eliane who spent months at a time living on her own. It sometimes caught up with her after long weeks, perhaps in an overcrowded elevator, with other bodies suddenly close by. It usually made her miss Joanna more.

Albrecht, back on his blankets, was standing to shake himself, restlessly, and Emma took note of it immediately. “I think he could use another walk.” She looked at Philippe. “Can I…?”

“I’ll tag along,” Adrian offered, when Philippe nodded. “If you let me. I still need to walk off some of all that flan!”

Brett threw him a thankful look, and he gave her a brief, near imperceptible nod in return. When Emma looked up at them sharply, Brett smoothly turned to Bjarne.

“So, Lindqvist. About those schemes?”

“Just let me finish this cake…” Bjarne gestured with his spoon at his dessert plate.

“If you’re up to it tonight,” Brett amended.

“Better now than later.” Bjarne looked across the table in search of a spot for his plate. “Before your wife breaks out the really hard stuff.”

...


	10. pt. 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Twenty years!
> 
> Where would their individual journeys have led Brett and Joanna, Bertha and Eliane, Agniesza, Philippe and even Bjarne over the past twenty years? – This is one glimpse at what might be “Campus”, now.
> 
> (This isn’t really a thing of chapters. It is one consecutive short story, posted in snippets because that is all work allows me. Unbetaed.)
> 
> (Every day is International Women's Day on "Campus". A scotch to that!)

**10**

_“So, Lindqvist. About those schemes?”_

_“Just let me finish this cake…” Bjarne gestured with his spoon at his dessert plate._

_“If you’re up to it tonight,” Brett amended._

_“Better now than later.” Bjarne looked across the table in search of a spot for his plate. “Before your wife breaks out the really hard stuff.”_

Agniesza didn’t have a quick retort to that because she had returned to the kitchen and was currently glowering at the clean plates in the dishwasher that occupied the space she would have needed for the dirty dishes in her hands.

With a quick push of her elbow, she opened the microwave and then proceeded to stack the clean plates into it one-handed, while she still balanced the dirty ones in the other.

“Well, that certainly works,” Eliane observed from the door.

Agniesza turned to give her a look. “If you have a better idea…”

Eliane stepped into the room and surveyed the bowls littering the counter. “Tell Philippe to take up less space while cooking?”

Agniesza reached for a pair of clean glasses, still hot to the touch. “It’s the first time he made crème brûlée again.”

“He seems a lot better,” Eliane observed. “It’s been a year, of course, and I haven’t seen him in the meantime –” She began to collect fancy whisks and used spoons in the biggest bowl at hand and simply placed it on top of the nearest stack of plates, though she was careful not to smudge her silk blouse. 

“He is better.” Agniesza eyed the dangerously swaying pile Eliane was creating. “Most of the time,” she amended. “And work helps, too. He has that Debussy project now. DFG funds.”

“The Department is doing fine, it seems,” Eliane commented, a little forlornly. She opened all the cupboards she could reach in search of empty space, and Agniesza followed suit, leaving clean dishes where they belonged.

“Much like your department, I imagine,” Agniesza said after a few moments of silence. It had been Eliane’s choice to leave, and she had left more than just a job at International Cultural Studies of Leipzig University. “Were you looking for the scotch glasses?”

Eliane nodded and reached for another few plates from the dishwasher. “They’re probably in the bottom row down here, behind everything else?”

Agniesza feigned to be scandalized. “As if we would unpack the liquor for cake already!”

Eliane chuckled. “Well, it’s been a year.”

“I received a nice set of cut crystal glasses this year, at least,” Agniesza offered. “They’re in the living-room cupboard, just help yourself to them.”

“Thank you.” Eliane set a last row of clean coffee cups onto the counter. “Is it all right if we borrow the study again?”

Agniesza heaved a sigh. “I guess Brett and I will have to take the roleplaying elsewhere tonight, then.” She laughed, warm and mirthful, at Eliane’s expression startled embarrassment. “I’m kidding, Eliane.” She couldn’t resist adding, “We only do that in my office.”

Eliane cleared her throat and didn’t look at her for another moment. Then she smiled fondly. “It’s good to hear you joke about that again.”

“It took a while,” Agniesza acknowledged. “But life is too short for anything else.” 

“The shortness of life, already? – I thought the heavy brooding was only about to commence,” Joanna said as she stepped into the kitchen, her gaze unerringly finding Eliane’s and gaining in warmth without even trying to.

“This is supposed to be a respite from the heavy brooding,” Agniesza complained, balancing on tiptoes with a few glasses in her grip.

“The heavy brooding is our job,” Joanna pointed out. She took the glasses from Agniesza’s hands and easily set them down on the high shelf.

“And today…” Agniesza gave Joanna an arch look. “…is a holiday.”

“So you really should delegate some of this.” Joanna walked over the dishwasher and reached for the next set of glasses, but paused to look at the dirty bowl on top of the dirty plates on the counter. “To someone with a better sense of gravity.”

Agniesza snickered. Joanna brushed a hand against Eliane’s arm in passing. “Are you on your way to contemplate the desolate state of international politics with Bertha?”

“Just for a bit,” Eliane demurred and her gaze followed Joanna’s arms as she stretched them up above her head to the shelf.

“We still have nineteen more days,” Joanna reminded her gently. The lines around her lips twitched and shifted differently into view as she spoke. “And this way you’ll already be done with the wallowing later. Go ahead, you’ve hardly talked to each other all year.”

“Funny,” Agniesza commented when Eliane had walked from the kitchen. “One could get the same impression about you two.”

“It’s been a long year,” Joanna allowed. “And a long three months.” She began to stack dirty dishes into the now empty racks of the washer with quiet efficiency.” But I am going to take her with me to Berlin tomorrow night, and she probably won’t see Bertha for another year.”

For a moment, they worked in tandem, the silence between them easy.

“And when will you see Eliane, after Berlin?” Agniesza then asked softly.

Joanna continued to stack plate after plate in a neat row. “We haven’t booked any flights yet,” she admitted. “But it’s on our list.”

“As long as none of you is booking a one-way ticket to Melbourne again…” Agniesza said under her breath while she shut the dishwasher with a little more force than necessary.

The sound carried over to the living-room, where Eliane had found two heavy glasses on display on the shelves, much better suited to scotch than to Agniesza’s aged Tokays. Brett and Bjarne had covered the dining table in sheets with complex diagrams, she could see as much in walking past. Out in the hallway, Adrian and Emma were getting dressed, with Philippe fussing over Albrecht’s equipment, while Albrecht himself was excitedly moving back and forth between the three of them.

“That is not a coat!” Philippe protested when Emma slipped into a denim jacket that seemed designed for spring weather at most. “At least take a scarf!”

Eliane smothered a smile when he reached for his own, no doubt expensive, shawl off the hook and proceeded to wrap it around Emma’s neck. Emma, she noted, did not protest.

“Albrecht, buddy, make sure that you don’t end up with a shawl, as well!” Bjarne called from the living room.

“Albrecht has a proper coat at all hours,” Philippe replied archly. He let his gaze swipe over Bjarne’s jacket on the coat rack. “While I am not sure the same can be said about you. That thing could use some ironing!”

“Don’t let me stop you!” Bjarne called back. Philippe huffed at the comment, but it was in good humor.

Eliane shook her head as she walked into the study and closed the door behind her. “How did Bjarne become so good with Philippe?” she wondered.

“Because he’s the only one of us who doesn’t tiptoe around him?” Bertha was already seated in the desk chair, a bottle of deep amber liquid in front of her. “Those are exquisite.” She nodded at the glasses Eliane placed on the polished surface of the bureau. “Agniesza knows how to enjoy her liquor.”

“Perhaps it’s also because Bjarne is a reasonably attractive man,” Eliane mused as she settled down in the opposite chair.

“He is the only man among us,” Bertha said drily. “It’s not as if Philippe had a wide selection to choose here.”

“I think it makes a difference,” Eliane insisted. “That it’s him, and not one of us.”

“You know –” Bertha looked on as Eliane reached for the bottle and pulled out the stopper. “I never know whether Bjarne is only sleeping with the women in his commune out there. It might also be the men.”

Eliane stilled in her motions, startled for a moment. “Who knows?” she allowed then. “God knows I’d never have imagined him settling down in the woods, either, and now it’s hard to imagine him elsewhere.”

Bertha raised an eyebrow. “Funny how settling down works out sometimes, isn’t it?”

Eliane gave Bertha a wary look before she poured their glasses. “Let me take a sip of this first, before you start with the underhand jibes.”

“No insinuations.” Bertha raised a hand in defense and accepted one of the glasses with the other. “We thought we would be settling down at last, didn’t we?”

“We are the ones who went back home,” Eliane pointed out. She swirled the liquid in her glass. “At long last.”

“But I’ve lived away for such a bloody long time, Lil.” Bertha sighed. “More than half my life.” She tipped her glass in Eliane’s direction. “We both have. – And, yes, there’s my mother and the house, and proper tea. And the garden.” She took a first, small sip and then turned her glass in long fingers. “But it’s been three years and I still haven’t arrived. And Brexit is... it’s such bollocks. People I know have lost their minds. People I know shrug at the xenophobic, antisemitic rants in the press. And these elections just have been the bloody last straw. Boris bloody Johnson!” She took another sip and set down her glass. “I’ve been talking with Paul about moving back to the continent.”

“You have?” Eliane blinked. “And where, to Innsbruck? - I thought you didn’t want to be caught dead in Tirol.”

“But I still want to be able to go there and complain about it, without needing a visa for it!” Bertha shrugged impatiently. “Innsbruck has halfway palatable tea, and I’m over there so often, now that Jonah has finally been given a permanent contract. And they’re going to have a second one –”

Eliane leaned forward in surprise. “Congratulations, Daniels! That is wonderful news!”

“They only just told me last week.” Bertha picked up her glass again and smiled to herself, at a memory Eliane wasn’t privy to. “Paul is already making plans for another crib.”

Eliane contemplated her friend for long seconds. “You miss sharing this with him,” she realized.

Bertha looked up a little more sharply. “That shouldn’t sound so strange to you, should it?” She shook her head with a chuckle and gazed up at the ceiling. “Even my mother understands it.”

Eliane raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “She’d let you go again?”

Bertha’s expression was deadpan. “You know my mother excels at being overbearing at a distance.”

Eliane raised her glass to her lips. “Does she ever.” The mellow, earthy tang of the scotch hit her tongue and moved down her throat as deep warmth.

“She’s well off enough I wouldn’t have to worry about her,” Bertha added with more seriousness. “She is happy I am around, of course, but she has kept a social calendar without me for decades.” She gestured at herself with her glass. “A social calendar much fuller than mine, a fact she tirelessly keeps pointing out to me.” Bertha took another, small sip and then looked squarely at Eliane, all trace of jest gone from her expression. “Becky is thinking about moving, too. They just cut down her NHS unit again, and she has no guarantee. And Samuel doesn’t have resident status –”

“Czech, wasn’t he?” Eliane tried to remember.

“Polish,” Bertha corrected her. “It’s all such a bloody mess. And I know there’s fascist idiots over there as well, aplenty. But I wouldn’t be on my own. And Paul’s house has a view and a garden…”

“…and he still has pretty broad shoulders,” Eliane supplied. “Plus, there’d be Jonah close by, and the little ones –”

“I don’t want to be my mother and be in their lives all the time,” Bertha stalled.

Eliane chuckled in amusement. “Daniels, your mother still has the market cornered there.”

“That would be my last move,” Bertha said wistfully. “I just want a bench to sit on, look at my flowers and write lengthy letters in longhand. – And I never want to pack another box again!”

“You said that three years ago already,” Eliane reminded her, but her tone was gentle. “But I don’t think the packing is going to be the issue.”

“It would be lovely if it were to a place without fascists, but that seems to be too much to ask these days,” Bertha grumbled, and there was something else in her expression that made Eliane keep quiet. “Oddly enough, it is easier elsewhere,” Bertha said, looking at the glass in her grasp. “The sense of betrayal is not as sharp. Or perhaps I simply allow myself more of a distance.”

“That feeling, I know,” Eliane agreed and tilted her glass, enjoying how the liquid gleamed under the light. “Every time I get off the plane in Berlin and they look at my passport in customs…” Something else occurred to her. “Would you finally marry Paul?”

“I couldn’t marry a goy as long as my mother is around,” Bertha protested. “But we might have to, in private. For resident status.” After a moment, she added, “Although it wouldn’t be simply for resident status.”

Eliane nodded slowly. “You’ve given this some thought.”

“We’ve talked it through,” Bertha said, but her smile outweighed her casual tone.

“That’s a perspective,” Eliane allowed. 

Bertha raised her glass to her lips again. “My grandmother married to get off the continent,” she said soberly. “Now I may have to marry to get onto the continent. – I recognize the irony, but I do not appreciate it.”

“You could write letters in longhand about it,” Eliane suggested. “With a mountain view?”

“I don’t know,” Bertha said frankly. “You know we have never really lived together.” She threw Eliane a dirty look when she snickered. “I am just so used to being on my own. Of course, we’re fine when I am with him for a few weeks. But I am also fine when we spend a few months on the phone and I put the energy into my garden instead. – Still, I know he’s there, he knows I’m here.”

“I can fully empathize with that,” Eliane agreed and raised her glass in salute.

Bertha snorted. “No, you cannot.” She set down her glass. “And I am not saying that because you cannot garden as much a cactus in the desert.”

Eliane threw her a wounded look, and Bertha sighed at the edge of defiance in it.

“Lil, you are crabby and keep pummeling that chip on your shoulder when you’re apart for more than a week. And ‘a week’ is a generous assumption here.”

...


	11. pt. 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Twenty years!
> 
> Where would their individual journeys have led Brett and Joanna, Bertha and Eliane, Agniesza, Philippe and even Bjarne over the past twenty years? – This is one glimpse at what might be “Campus”, now.
> 
> (This isn’t really a thing of chapters. It is one consecutive short story, posted in snippets because that is all work allows me. Unbetaed.)
> 
> (There is not much plot. Just sweet nostalgia. And perhaps a little bit of plot. Or at least of Bertha talking some sense into someone. Possibly.)
> 
> (This update took longer than expected. Sorry about that. It was not a deliberate decision on my part to replicate the longer waits for the chapter 11-13 of the original “Campus”, but the pandemic happened here as it has happened everywhere else, and writing time is even less readily available than before.)

11

_Bertha raised her glass to her lips again. “My grandmother married to get off the continent,” she said soberly. “Now I may have to marry to get onto the continent. – I recognize the irony, but I do not appreciate it.”_

_“You could write letters in longhand about it,” Eliane suggested. “With a mountain view?”_

_“I don’t know,” Bertha said frankly. “You know we have never really lived together.” She threw Eliane a dirty look when she snickered. “I am just so used to being on my own. Of course, we’re fine when I am with him for a few weeks. But I am also fine when we spend a few months on the phone and I put the energy into my garden instead. – Still, I know he’s there, he knows I’m here.”_

_“I can fully empathize with that,” Eliane agreed and raised her glass in salute._

_Bertha snorted. “No, you cannot.” She set down her glass. “And I am not saying that because you cannot garden as much a cactus in the desert.”_

_Eliane threw her a wounded look, and Bertha sighed at the edge of defiance to it._

_“Lil, you are crabby and keep pummeling that chip on your shoulder when you’re apart for more than a week. And ‘a week’ is a generous assumption here.”_

“I can function very well on my own,” Eliane said, her pride piqued.

“Of course you can,” Bertha agreed. “Then again, not even your shoes content themselves with mere functionality.”

In a measured movement, Eliane set down her glass. “We both have careers. And we made one vow to each other early on –”

“…and another one far later,” Bertha muttered under her breath.

“…one vow,” Eliane insisted, undeterred. “To never say ‘don’t take that offer because of me’. And we never have.”

“Splendid.” Bertha took another sip of her drink. “Have you ever tried ‘please don’t take that offer for both our sakes?’ – I just might be able to come up with a prompt.”

“I cannot demand that of her.” Eliane protested. “She is leading her first Department, it’s the chance of a lifetime!”

Bertha gave her a long, pointed look. “That is not what I meant.”

Eliane blinked, baffled, and a small bout of silence spread between them. From somewhere beyond the study, further down the hallway, laughter carried over.

It was Bertha who spoke again. “We didn’t talk about this last year because we were all tiptoeing around Philippe, and because Joanna had just started her post and was on that particular rollercoaster. But you two being tenured on different continents is a recipe for disaster.” She met Eliane’s gaze squarely. “You know I never agreed with your taking on on Bloomington again. Not after how they treated you before, not when you were established in Europe. Both you and Joanna.” She sighed when she saw Eliane’s shoulders tense. “Yes, you stuck it to Matthew, and he deserved it. You stuck it to Tom, to Miranda, to your father, and to everyone who ever doubted you. Well done.” Bertha leaned forward in her chair. “But is it worth it, now? This living from sabbatical to sabbatical? And spending so much of your lives apart meanwhile?”

“Are you talking about Paul and yourself?” Eliane challenged.

“I am retired, and, apparently, about to move to Tyrol.” Bertha raised a pointed eyebrow. “I was also present for your little reunion moment earlier. And despite my blood pressure, my eyes still work fairly well. So do not tell me that you did not count down the past three months. In minutes.”

Eliane looked down at her hands.

Bertha shook her head. “Do you truly want to continue this for another decade?”

“I have a team that depends on me,” Eliane said with decisiveness. “We both have. My department only just won the grant! And there’s still my mother –”

“How is she doing?” Bertha’s tone gentled immediately. “I am sorry I didn’t ask earlier.”

Eliane shrugged. “She barely recognizes me, most of the time. – But she enjoys all the activities and helps with flowers and decorating. Last week, she was showing off doing seasonal wreaths! Everyone loves her. She seems happy, and very much at peace.” Eliane chuckled, somewhat at a loss. “I think outliving my dad has done wonders for her. And my brother surprises me, he is more attuned to her than I ever gave him credit for. And Joseph is there, of course. His whole family.” She nodded, more to herself. “She fares better as Mrs. Kirkby than she ever did as Mrs. Darhayne, I have to admit that.”

“She sounds more at peace than you are,” Bertha observed. “Which doesn’t take much, granted.”

“Are you about done?” Eliane threw Bertha a sharp look and finished her drink in one long swallow, tipping back her head.

“Not quite.” Bertha pushed the bottle across the smooth surface of the bureau towards Eliane with two fingers. “Speaking of ‘grants’, and ‘taking for granted’ –” She gave the bottle another nudge. “Take another one of these, dear, you’ll need it.” She waited for Eliane to pull the stopper from the bottle. “You do a realize that you have a wife in addition to a team? – Though heaven forbid you two depend on each other for anything but for being insufferably stubborn!”

“She understands,” Eliane said curtly. “Perks of working the same job, even if in different places.” She poured herself another measure of scotch. “We are grown-ups. We cannot just drop everything when we miss each other.”

“But you could,” Bertha pointed out. “What if something were to happen to Joanna? Wouldn’t you be on the next plane, never mind your job, your team or your mother?”

Eliane lifted her refilled glass and took a slow sip. “You’re not playing fair.”

Bertha nodded without remorse. “That is why I usually win.” She took the last, dainty sip of her drink and pushed her glass in Eliane’ direction. “Would you ever forgive yourself for not having been at her side?” She held up a hand. “No need to answer that because I know it’s ‘no’.”

Both of them looked on as Eliane pulled out the stopper once more and tilted the bottle. The low light of the study lamp met the soft fall of liquid, teasing out red and orange hues.

Eliane sighed as she moved the bottle to the side again. Bertha tipped her drink in salute towards her, but Eliane merely picked up her glass and canted it in her grasp, looking at her drink without seeing it. “I’m not even sure we could suddenly live that well together, again,” she finally said.

“Pardon me?”

There was another pause. Eliane smoothed a thumb across the cut surface of the glass. “For one, I am a stocky, grumpy, old professor at this point.”

“Yes, that we all can see clearly, dear,” Bertha said with amusement. “But to Joanna, you still hung the moon.”

Eliane continued, undeterred. “I am a stocky, grumpy, old professor at this point and she is –” She exhaled in a huff and shook her head. “You have seen her,” she then said quietly. “She is sitting out there on the couch, and she is perfect. More stunning than ever.” Eliane took a breath and then offered an angry little laugh. “She is the best-age ‘hot professor’ that half of Berlin wants to bed, and the other half of town has at least thought about it. And that is not something I need to see on a daily basis.”

“You cannot be serious?” Bertha asked in bafflement. “Lil, Joanna has adored you since the first time she laid eyes on you. – Well, perhaps not in those first weeks when you were ready to strangle her. Though in your defense, she was not making it easy.”

Eliane looked up towards the ceiling, chuckling at the memory. “God, she was so infuriating.”

“Foreplay,” Bertha brushed aside the remark. “Despite you being a mile deep in the closet back then.” She changed the topic. “But I hear there is an endowment professorship in the Berlin ring soon?”

“That would be a long shot,” Eliane demurred. “A very long shot.”

Bertha took another, small sip of her drink. “Not that long, perhaps. You know how good you are at what you do.”

“I do,” Eliane allowed. “But I am good at it where I am right now. I want to make a difference. And the political climate has to change. Next year, hopefully. I want to be there for it, and fight for it.” She raised her glass, her index finger pointing at Bertha. “I don’t jump ship. That is not who I am.”

“Not at all,” Bertha agreed. “But who’s the ship here? Your department, or Joanna?” 

Eliane opened her mouth to reply, but then simply took a long swig of her drink.

“Someone rebuilding relations with Berlin would certainly be an improvement of the political climate,” Bertha ventured. “And you know that it will not be the Cape Cod cabin and a Golden Retriever with Joanna.”

“I know,” Eliane said immediately. She turned her glass in her hand. “We talked about Indiana. Once. But…”

Bertha sighed, this time in commiseration. “It is rather surprising where one ends up, or thought to have ended up, only to question it again entirely.” She gestured at herself with her free hand. “Tyrol! And I do not even ski!”

“I cannot see myself without a lecture hall,” Eliane admitted, after a moment. “Try as I might, I just can’t.”

Bertha raised an eyebrow at her. “You do know that you will be an emerita at some point.”

Eliane smiled wryly. “Don’t remind me.”

“But it’s not just the lecture hall for you.” Bertha settled back against her chair. “You could have that as regular faculty, or even as an adjunct. – You cannot see yourself without the professor’s chair.”

Eliane shrugged in acknowledgment, making the silk of her blouse shift ever so slightly along her neckline.

After a beat, Bertha asked, “Can you see yourself without Joanna?”

“Never.”

Bertha nodded slowly. “But you are without her, most of the time,” she observed.

“We didn’t think it would be this hard.” Eliane pushed a hand through her hair and only then seemed to remember she had put it up. Two strands came loose and fell along her temple. “The Research Center is so much work, with the interdisciplinary angle, and I was writing that grant for the better part of this spring and last autumn, without ever taking a break.” She shook her head. “I knew we would be busy. But I didn’t expect it to hit me like this. The days we don’t even get to talk –”

“I wouldn’t nag you so much if I saw you happy with the status quo,” Bertha said. “But it is visible even to the blind that it is eating away at you. And at your marriage.” She lifted her glass to her lips again and closed her eyes over another sip. When she opened them again, her gaze was alert and unyielding on Eliane. “Your arrangement worked as long as she traveled after you and wasn’t tenured. But perhaps it’s time you traveled after her, for a change? – For good,” she clarified. “I don’t mean another Melbourne stunt.”

Eliane shifted her shoulders. “Perhaps,” she conceded reluctantly.

“You’d think I just suggested you go live with an ogre,” Bertha said, amused. “All I am saying is: look at opportunities over here again. You have led Departments for a long time. Perhaps it’s her turn in that chair now?” She canted her head to the side, her tone one of curiosity, not of reprimand. “Or do you think she is less deserving of it than you are?”

“God, no, of course not.” Eliane set down her drink and raised her hands. “She absolutely should lead her own Department. She’s brilliant. She has earned this in every sense, and the success proves her right. Look at what she has achieved in little more than a year!” She sighed, pride now tempered with dejection. “She is in her absolute prime.”

“Ah.” Bertha nodded, feeling a if she was missing a piece of that argument.

“Yes, Daniels.” Aggravation shone through Eliane’s tones. “And I am a little bit past that.”

“And now you are so considerate as to not remind her of that?” Bertha guessed, trying to figure out this particular undercurrent. “Is this what makes you hesitant about moving back to Europe?” She pinched the bridge of her nose with two fingers. “Lil,” she then said patiently. “I love you dearly, but you were a stubborn ogre with questionable work habits even twenty years ago, so it is not as if much has changed on that front.”

“But I was still on the planche,” Eliane insisted, and her answer came so quickly that it betrayed the familiarity of her concern. “And had both my original knees. And could jump out of bed without wincing.”

“I don’t think she ended up with you because of the speed with which you can jump out bed,” Bertha surmised. She pursed her lips. “Into it, perhaps.” She set down her glass and looked at Eliane in disbelief. “You are not seriously doubting, after twenty years with that woman, that you hung the moon, as far as she’s concerned? - Possibly the stars, too.”

Eliane looked at her glass, her mouth twitching. “Stars fade.”

Bertha rolled her eyes. “Why do you Literature people always have to be so dramatic?”

“It’s not…” Eliane shut her eyes for a moment and shook her head. “We do love each other. I do not doubt that. And we will still be arguing about narrative theory on our deathbeds, I am sure of that.” She shrugged, a little helplessly. “But if she needs to look at some healthy kneecaps in between, I would prefer not to see it.”

“That is a heap of horseshit,” Bertha proclaimed. “Besides, you should be there to shoot each and every one of them. – In the kneecaps,” she amended.

Eliane smiled, a little forlornly, and the vulnerability of it tore at Bertha.

“Don’t let her slip away.” Bertha gestured with her drink in hand. “You need to be there. I know this is trite, but relationships take work. And time.” She took another sip, leaving just a thin layer of amber against the bottom of the glass. “She is exhausted. She is weary. And she needs you more than she knows because she is too worn out to even ponder that. – Do you know the first thing she said when she arrived? After ‘Hello, everyone’ and ‘When did Adrian become so tall’?” Bertha waited until she had Eliane’s full attention. “It was, ‘Is she here yet?’”.

Eliane took a deep, uneven breath and squared her shoulders before she tossed back the remnants of her drink. “I am here.”

“Go to your wife, Lil,” Bertha said simply. “Politics will be just as miserable next year.” She drained the last of the scotch from her glass and slowly rose from her chair, shifting her weight until her back stopped protesting. “And I will find Agniesza for a bootlegged nightcap. Heaven knows I could use one.”


	12. pt. 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Twenty years!
> 
> Where would their individual journeys have led Brett and Joanna, Bertha and Eliane, Phillippe and Agniesza and even Bjarne over the past twenty years? – This is one glimpse at what might be “Campus”, now.
> 
> (This isn’t really a thing of chapters. It is one consecutive short story, posted in snippets because that is all work allows me. Unbetaed.)
> 
> (This is penultimate installment of this vignette; not as lengthly as I would liked it to be, but writing time continues to be scarce. Still, I promised a dear friend (and her wife), both of whom have a history with “Campus”, to get out something for them to read while one of them is recovering from a medical procedure. So here is something, because a promise is a promise.)

12

_“Go to your wife, Lil,” Bertha said simply. “Politics will be just as miserable next year.” She drained the last of the scotch from her glass and slowly rose from her chair, shifting her weight until her back stopped protesting. “And I will find Agniesza for a bootlegged nightcap. Heaven knows I could use one.”_

The curtain of voices drifting out into the hallway had softened when Eliane stepped through it, glasses in hand, with Bertha behind her who carried the bottle of scotch.

Philippe and Agniesza were talking in quiet tones, seated on the couch. Across from them, Adrian was sprawled across a chair, the glow of his phone screen illuminating his face. Emma sat at Agniesza’s side, head on her shoulder, already a little drowsy with the late hour. Now and then, she glanced over into the dining room, where Brett and Bjarne still sat bent over their schemes. Brett typed something into a calculator with a concentrated frown just then, while Bjarne had found something else to eat, something wrapped in golden foil that shimmered briefly in the light of the overhead lamp as he tossed the wrapper to the side.

“Sweetheart, I think it’s past bedtime for you,” Agniesza observed, dusting a kiss onto Emma’s head.

“Mom…” Emma protested, but she couldn’t stifle a yawn.

Agniesza glanced over at the dining room table, as well, her gaze lingering on Brett instead of Bjarne. “Everyone will still be here in the morning.”

Adrian looked up at Eliane and Bertha. “I think that’s our cue to leave, anyway.”

“Certainly not,” Eliane protested, even as she kept glancing around for Joanna. “Even when you were still half your age, I don’t believe we ever told you to leave!” 

Adrian squinted up at her, and then looked past Eliane to Bertha. “Yes, but now I am old enough to get your jokes… And I am not old enough yet to be okay with them.”

Bertha laughed, loudly, and Philippe snickered. “Fair enough.”

“Bed or the pull-out, which was it?” Adrian asked his sister, who was suddenly on her feet, quicker than anyone would have expected.

“You are not going into my room without me!”

“Hiding something behind your Greenpeace star cuts?” Adrian guessed, and Agniesza pushed herself to her feet with a sigh before Emma could retort anything.

“Your sister is going to be your host for the night, so you better behave,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, no snoring!” Emma murmured, glaring at her brother for good measure, and then at the adults. “And you all act weird when you are having your ‘nightcaps’, anyway.” 

“Once a year, your mothers are allowed to have drink with their friends,” Agniesza said without missing a beat. “And at least if we still share a nightcap, the bathrooms are free for you to brush up.”

Eliane looked on as Emma ambled over to the dining room table where Brett looked up immediately and looped an arm around her hips. Emma allowed herself to be pulled closer and gave Bjarne a small, awkward wave goodnight. Philippe, she hugged on her way back, sleepily, and he kissed her cheek.

“’night, Philippe. Thanks for letting me use the blowtorch.”

“my pleasure.” He chuckled, a sound of being at peace. “Good night, _petite chérie_.”

Emma leaned into him for a moment longer, while Adrian glanced at the unmarked bottle that Agniesza set down on the table. “Uncle János’ homebrew? – Ma says that could turn you blind!”

“Ma also wouldn’t let you go on his tractor on your own, and aren’t you glad that I ignored that, too?” Agniesza replied with a smile.

“Also, ‘Ma’ is a wee bit of a wimp when it comes to hard liquor,” Bertha added under her breath, making Philippe snicker again.

“I think it’s time we hightail it out of here,” Adrian decided sagely, pulling Emma with him, who then pushed at him to get through the doorframe first.

“Good night to you, too!” Agniesza called after them and turned to take in Bertha and Eliane. “Time for our traditional nightcap, then?”

“Where is Joanna?” Eliane asked, one hand curling and uncurling as she glanced around the room.

“She went to take a call,” Philippe said immediately. He glanced at his watch. “About ten minutes ago?”

Eliane frowned. “A call?”

“One of her postdocs, I believe.” Philippe shrugged with deceptive ease. “Something about a deadline?”

Bertha raised a steep eyebrow at that. “Closing in on midnight, during the holidays?”

“It’s the time for end-of-year deadlines and reports,” Eliane said defensively. “It is not that unusual.”

“Please, as if there would be any holidays in a department Joanna leads,” Agniesza rolled her eyes. “She probably took care of it already and is now holed up in the guestroom with some paperwork.”

“Which we all know she smuggled in,” Philippe agreed, unhappily.

“Or perhaps she has simply fallen asleep,” Agniesza ventured. “She looked tired when she got here this afternoon.”

Bertha nodded. “She looked like she hasn’t slept since September.”

Agniesza lined up a set of shot glasses on the table. “One last drink, Eliane? Or some domestic paperwork?”

“Or putting that postdoc in their place and throwing Joanna’s phone out of the window?” Bertha settled into one of the armchairs and groaned. “Darn it, you will have to haul me out of this later. My back is not being cooperative today.”

“I think I’ve had enough,” Eliane admitted ruefully, looking at the others. “And it’s been a long day of traveling. A glass of that would probably knock me out cold.”

“Does anyone actually believe that Eliane cannot hold her liquor?” Agniesza asked in a low voice when Eliane had taken her leave and her steps disappeared down the corridor.

“Hardly.” Bertha snorted and accepted a glass with a finger’s breadth of clear liquid.

“We’ve seen her at enough end-of-term parties,” Philippe reminded them. “When Jeremy inevitably ordered shots at Nikolaischule? She was always still standing at the end of the night, and speaking in full sentences.”

“Literature scholars,” Bertha muttered. “And unable to say no to a challenge. – It’s a marvel I made it to retirement in one piece.” She sniffed at her glass. “What even is this, Agniesza?”

“Rowanberry, tried and true,” Agniesza said and chuckled when Bertha grimaced. “A glass, Philippe?”

There was a small moment of hesitation before Philippe nodded. “Just one.” He leaned back into the couch cushions. “For the record, I am glad if Eliane prefers paperwork with Joanna to drinks with us.”

“Paperwork.” Bertha snickered and mimicked air quotes, without spilling even a drop of her drink.

“That’s preferable to imagining they’re doing unspeakable things to our guestroom furniture right now,” Agniesza said wryly, while she handed Philippe a glass and took one for herself.

“It would be good for them,” Philippe insisted. “There was too much Melbourne energy in the air this afternoon – one of them brooding, the other all over the place...”

“Lil is probably shooting that postdoc through the phone right now,” Bertha mused. “Which is an excellent departure from the port of Melbourne, if you ask me.”

“A final glass, Bjarne?” Agniesza called over into the living room. “Brett, darling?”

“We’re just wrapping up,” Bjarne replied. Next to him him, Brett squinted and looked up above the rim of her reading glasses, somewhat disheveled after studying small-print schemes in the low light, her smile warm and apologetic and tugging at Agniesza’s insides.

“Just enough for a toast,” she allowed.

“And hash browns.” Agniesza hummed to herself.

“How is Joanna?” Bertha inquired, returning to the conversation at hand. “You must have seen more of her this year.”

“Barely,” Agniesza supplied. “Heading a research unit that size… But we’ve seen enough of her to know she’s tired.”

“And wired,” Philippe added. “I thought she would bend the dessert tray into a bow when the doorbell rang and finally announced Eliane’s arrival!”

“Which bring us back to unspeakable things they should be doing.” Bertha raised her glass. “Each other. Not student papers.”

“I will drink to that.” Agniesza touched her glass to Bertha’s. “Although they’ve never been where the wild things are –”

“Ah, our resident Department of Literature and Drama?” Brett asked lightly, ambling over with Bjarne.

“They need to talk,” Bjarne agreed. “Isn’t that our usual verdict?” He leaned against the back of Bertha’s chair with a hip. 

“The one thing they do not do well at all.” Brett sat down on the armrest next to Agniesza. “At times, it is hard to believable their deal with language professionally.”

“They will sort it out,” Bertha said, raising her glass. “And we can drink to another year together.”

“And it’s not an easy situation,” Philippe allowed over the clink of the shot glasses. “They aren’t even in the same time zone!”

“They could be,” Bertha pointed out. “But perhaps not on the academic job market. It is either tenure or domestic tranquility.”

“And we all know they are not cut out for the later,” Agniesza sighed, before she downed her drink in one long swallow.

Brett canted her head to the side and gave her a fond look. “I would choose growing potatoes over grading papers if it meant sharing my life with you, Princess.”

“You are yelling at potato heads for a living these days,” Agniesza said, very gently, her voice low.

Bjarne cleared his throat. “I don’t know how, but this feels like too much information.” He looked at his glass suspiciously. “On the downside, she makes you drink this, though. – Ugh. Agniesza. Will this make me see little mice?”

“Moose, at most,” Philippe offered. “Familiar enough?”

Bjarne screwed his eyes shut and tossed back his drink. “Gah. Remind me to say no to this next year!”

“You say that every year,” Bertha cut in dryly, sipping at her glass with perfect poise and pulling back her shoulders.

Outside in the hallway, at its far end, Eliane echoed the same gesture in from of the guestroom. She squared her shoulders. Then she knocked.

“Yes?”

Joanna looked up from where she was seated at the foot of the bed, exhausted and beautiful under the warm glow of the light above, leaving Eliane breathless.

Joanna glanced up at her with a bit of a frown. “Are you two done already?”

“Priorities.” Eliane closed the door behind her and leaned against it. She cleared her throat when she caught sight of her own reflection in the window, with the winter night dark and quiet on the other side of the glass. “The kids went to bed and Agniesza got out the killer nightcap.”

“The hour of the unmarked bottle?” Joanna asked with an amused smile. Her hair was curled over one shoulder, a little tousled. She had to have been looking down at her mobile in her hand, the screen was still on, colorful squares at contrast to the warm green of her shirt. “Is anyone still standing, besides Bertha?”

“At this point, probably not,” Eliane allowed. She nodded at the phone in Joanna’s hand. “You had a call?”

Joanna shut off the screen and shook her head. “Deniz from the project,” she said and pressed her lips together. **“** Just a clearance issue for the end-of-year reports.”

Eliane hesitated before she spoke. “Your postdocs are calling you at this hour?”

“Just the one in charge.” Joanna stood with a sigh. “I told her to take care of it for me. Because I want to work as little as possible in the next few weeks.”

They stood at an impasse for a moment, looking at each other.

Eliane’s heart clenched, and she struggled to come up with words that would fit between them now, bridging the gap without taking up space. “I know this is awkward –”

Joanna arched an eyebrow, her expression wry. “If I had known your scotch hour would be over so quickly, I would have freshened up and changed into something less comfortable.”


	13. pt. 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Twenty years!
> 
> Where would their individual journeys have led Brett and Joanna, Bertha and Eliane, Agniesza, Philippe and even Bjarne over the past twenty years? - This is one glimpse at what might be "Campus", now.
> 
> (This is the final chapter, although it still isn't really a thing of chapters. It is one consecutive short story, posted in snippets because that is all work allows me. Unbetaed.)
> 
> (Don't read this at work, perhaps. Unless you are working from home and/or have a great pokerface)

13

_They stood at an impasse for a moment, looking at each other._

_Eliane’s heart clenched, and she struggled to come up with words that would fit between them now, would bridge the gap without taking up space. “I know this is awkward –”_

_Joanna arched an eyebrow, her expression wry. “If I had known your scotch hour would be over so quickly, I would have freshened up and changed into something less comfortable.”_

Eliane needed a moment to react. “You are aware that it’s the middle of the night, and we are at Brett’s place?” she asked lightly.

“I am mostly aware that we are in the same physical space,” Joanna retorted, sidestepping the attempt at levity. “For nineteen days. And if you think I care right now about the hour or about where we are, you are sorely mistaken.”

“I –” Eliane searched Joanna face, who was looking at her unblinking, but finally faltered.

“Or…” Joanna gave a sharp, small shrug. “Don’t you want to?”

Eliane looked upwards for a moment, finding her eyes unexpectedly wet. “Who on earth would not want you?” she sighed and shook her head.

Joanna crossed the last two steps between them and curved a palm to Eliane’s face. “You didn’t even kiss me hello properly.”

Eliane gave a wan smile. “In front everyone, out in the hallway? Did you want to scandalize the entire team?”

“I wanted you to kiss me,” Joanna stated quietly. She moved in, backing Eliane against the door, reveling in the sudden closeness. Eliane had to tilt up her head to look her in the eye like this and Joanna held her gaze for a second before she wiped the glossy lipstick off Eliane’s lips with two fingers and bent down to capture her lips.

Joanna’s kiss was sweet and insistent and reduced Eliane’s attempt to speak to a sigh at the back of her throat. When Joanna leaned back a little, Eliane didn’t know how her own arms had ended up looped around Joanna’s neck.

“That’s more like it,” she admitted and had to clear her throat.

“I’ll say.” Joanna’s fingers had moved down her sides, playing with the hem of Eliane’s blouse. She let herself be tugged down again, Eliane holding her just short of her lips.

“What is it?” Joanna’s voice was a warm rumble, close to Eliane’s ear, and Eliane closed her eyes.

“You keep that up and –” Eliane drew an unsteady breath. “I don’t know what will happen,” she admitted.

“Good,” Joanna murmured. One of her hands moved away and Eliane heard the muted click of the key in the lock, reverberating against her senses with sudden possibility. Then the hand was back, slowly pushing underneath the hem of her blouse. “I know you haven’t been comfortable in your body lately –” Joanna’s lips brushed her ear, deliberately. “But I have.”

This time, she kissed Eliane fiercely, without giving her a moment’s respite, tasting last remnants of scotch on her tongue. Only when Eliane leaned into her, heavily and responding in kind, did she pull back.

“Three months. Eliane.” Joanna’s shaken voice found its echo on Eliane’s features. “Three months!” At the close distance, Joanna could see the dark shadows lining the paper-thin skin under Eliane’s eyes, the sharp crease above her brow and her lips, still parted, with the color smeared down her chin. Joanna shifted forward and pushed Eliane against the door again. “Three months of thinking about this –” Her lips were on Eliane’s jaw, moving upwards with intent.

A small gasp escaped Eliane when Joanna’s mouth closed over her earlobe, demanding attention. Her hips pushed forward involuntarily.

Joanna stilled and glanced up. “Your body still wants me,” she observed, her tone low.

Eliane exhaled in a huff. “My body may not be quite up to par.” She glanced to the side, a little embarrassed at having let that bit slide.

“I –” Joanna was thrown for a loop. “How about we let my body decide that?” she then suggested instead. She took one of Eliane’s hands and slowly drew it down her torso, finally settling it at her waist. The small shiver than passed through her at the contact was unmistakable.

“Look –”

Joanna struggled to speak and Eliane, mesmerized, moved her fingers, searching for a spot that would make Joanna’s breath catch in her throat like that again.

“I know that–” Joanna closed her eyes, her hand still on Eliane’s. “Perhaps you don’t need this. Perhaps you can compartmentalize better. But I –” Joanna’s breath hitched when Eliane’s fingers dug deeper. “There is so little time. And I am done pretending that I wouldn’t beg.”

Eliane’s eyes snapped up, but before she could reply anything, Joanna had slid the collar of her blouse to the side and leaned in, drawn to the newly bared skin. “God, this shirt looks so good on you.”

“I changed at the airport,” Eliane murmured, angling her head to the side. The silk moved more tightly against her torso as Joanna pulled on the fabric. She shifted her stance, thought becoming more of a challenge as her sense of perception narrowed down to the barrier of her own skin. “And I did – my make-up – …on the train –”

“All to make me wait,” Joanna complained against the skin of her neck. “I was looking at you all through dinner…”

Eliane drew back a little. “Looking at _you_ all through dinner was all _I_ could do –”

“You could have fooled me,” Joanna mumbled, the note of insecurity all but lost along Eliane’s skin.

But Eliane drew up Joanna’s face and held it between her hands, marveling at the exhaustion and the eagerness across those stark features, so uncompromising and so undeniably hers. She made sure she had Joanna’s full attention before she spoke. “At times, I think I might have another for working days,” she said throatily and then gave a lopsided smile. “Your Grace is too costly to wear every day.”

“Beatrice suits you,” Joanna conceded with a small dip of her head. “But I am no Prince.”

“You are perfect,” Eliane insisted. “And I wish I was better about this. I –” She stopped herself, instead walking Joanna backwards into the room. “You are _so_ perfect. You –” She wrapped a hand around Joanna’s neck and drew her down, needing to kiss her again. With the other hand, she found the next button on the soft green shirt Joanna was wearing, undoing a third and fourth in addition to the first two that were already invitingly opened. Her fingertips ghosted against soft skin. “You got a head start here,” she observed, pulling the fabric off one shoulder to put her lips to the skin and feeling Joanna agree in a low hum.

Eliane’s foot caught on something as she was inching Joanna towards the bed, and when she glanced down, she saw Joanna’s overnight bag. The zipper was pulled down and the soft towel, small tube and firm pillow on top were familiar.

Eliane arched an eyebrow, her face close to Joanna’s “…a head start, and some serious preparation?”

Joanna shrugged. “I want you to be comfortable.” If there was a small hint of a blush crawling up Eliane’s cheeks at that, it carried over into Joanna’s voice, low and warm. “I want you.”

The words impacted low in Eliane’s body, making her eyes narrow and the corners of her mouth curl. Her palms connected more solidly with Joanna’s shirtfront and then she pushed, sending Joanna backwards, sprawling across the bed. Two seconds passed where Joanna pushed herself up on her elbows, her glasses askew, and looked up at Eliane who raked her eyes across her and flexed her hands at her sides, once. Twice. Then she got down on her knees with a just a small stutter in motion.

Joanna tried to sit back up. “But can you –”

Eliane stabilized herself with her hands on Joanna’s thighs. “Let me,” she rasped. Her expression made Joanna’s breath catch.

Faced with the almost parted shirtfront, Eliane could see the deeper breaths echoed in the rise and fall of Joanna’s torso. She glanced down at her own hands on Joanna’s thighs, taking in her own grasp and the way Joanna shifted to accommodate her between her legs. Her mouth went dry at the sight.

Joanna was still watching her, eyes ablaze. Eliane answered her gaze while she undid the last button of the shirt and then reached up to brush the fabric off Joanna’ shoulders, to draw the glasses off her face and leave Joanna blinking. She watched her own fingers tangle in Joanna’s already disheveled hair, watched them slide down her sides and then settle firmly at the broad curve of Joanna’s hips. Her fingertips moved against the soft skin there, around and slowly up her back. Joanna sat very straight, her breaths shallow, while Eliane’s finger moved without hurry until she brushed against the clasp of Joanna’s bra.

Joanna took a more audible breath, shifting where she sat on the bed, but Eliane made no motion to undo the clasp. Instead, she took in the sight in front of her, staring at the line of sleek fabric that dipped down invitingly in front.

Eliane trailed two fingers down the dips of Joanna’s spine. She still didn’t look up.

“This is not your usual fare.”

She reached up and slowly dragged the back of a nail across a barely covered slope of breast, just at the height that made Joanna buck forward.

“Perhaps it is now,” Joanna conceded on a gasp.

Eliane glanced up, then dragged her nail back the same path. “You think so?”

“I…” Joanna had trouble to remember speaking when Eliane’s hands opened and cupped the weight of her breasts.

“I think I like it,” Eliane decided in a murmur, leaning in to brush her cheek against familiar skin. The snap of the bra clasp sounded between them. “But I also like it off.” Eliane tugged the fabric away with impatience, Joanna’s breasts falling forward, into Eliane’s hands and into her mouth, pliant as if softened by the onslaught of years and years of want in Eliane’s touch.

Joanna’s hands closed around Eliane’s head, the grip tightening when Eliane swirled her tongue around hardening skin and drew it into her mouth. An incredulous stutter made it past Joanna’s lips and Eliane smiled against fragrant skin when she felt Joanna curve her whole body around her in response. She trailed one hand down Joanna’s torso, felt her stiffen in expectation, but Eliane merely drew a thumb across the inseam of Joanna’s trousers, enough to make her jerk forward, yet not enough to quench the small, frustrated gasp the move elicited. She kept her hand on Joanna’s thigh, pushing the smallest bit to make Joanna spread open wider, and kept up the light pressure, making her wait.

Eliane was not done drinking Joanna in like this, straining against her touch, already warm with want and attuned to her every move. Eliane could feel the tension build along Joanna’s thighs, felt it increase and then give way as Joanna let go and leaned back, supporting herself on her hands. When Eliane glanced up, she could see that Joanna’s head had tipped backwards, the column of her throat standing out in in relief.

For a moment, Eliane stared at the sight in hunger, then she moved in a haste to tear Joanna’s fly open, wincing when she had to sit back to pull off pants and underwear. Joanna was looking down at her now, lip caught between her teeth, and Eliane carelessly tossed last bits of clothing behind her, intent instead on fitting her fingers into the soft dents underneath Joanna’s hipbones, taking in Joanna displayed to her eyes. She bent forward to kiss the inside of a thigh, smoothing her lips against soft, pale skin, and delighted in Joanna’s helpless sigh.

A cough out in the hallway made them both look up, the reality of Brett’s guest room and their friends down the hall returning. Eliane turned around and glanced at the door.

Joanna held her back with a hand on her shoulder. “– y’think anyone might come knocking with a drink now?” she panted, her voice low and strained.

“They better not,” Eliane said possessively, turning back towards Joanna. “I am not sharing.” Her fingers smoothed over a spot where the last, creamy remnants of her lipstick had left marks on Joanna’s thighs. She stilled at the image, swallowing against the naked want that rushed up her insides and curled into a throb low in her body.

Joanna caught onto the moment on a sharp exhale, but before she could have said anything, Eliane pulled on her hips, angled her head forward and reduced every sensation to salt and slick heat against her tongue.

Joanna’s arms gave out and she fell back against the mattress, threading shaky fingers into Eliane’s hair and muttering words that remained unintelligible. She tried find purchase with her feet to push herself closer towards the deft tongue moving against her, but Eliane held her down with a slender hand against her stomach, retreating again and again until Joanna whimpered with frustration.

Eliane pulled back a fraction. “Was there something you wanted to say?” she asked teasingly, only to offer a rough swipe that had Joanna surge forward in search of more contact.

“There are lots of things we should talk about,” Joanna bit out, struggling to raise her head and glare at Eliane. “Too bad you are better at others.”

“At least I am good at something,” Eliane pointed out with humor, delicately wiping at the corner of her mouth with a fingertip. “And thank God it involves this.” She turned her head and pressed a reverent kiss high to the inside of Joanna’s thigh, closing her eyes at the contact with a sigh. “God, you are perfect.” The moment softened, gaining a different weight until Eliane quirked an eyebrow at Joanna. “Do you really prefer that I keep talking, or...?”

“Come here,” Joanna said instead, her voice thick. Her fingers grasped at Eliane’s shoulders until she had enough of a hold to pull Eliane up her body. Eliane landed heavily on top off her, her legs stiff from the long minutes of kneeling, but Joanna paid the lack of grace no heed, fumbling instead with the silky barrier of Eliane’s blouse trapped between them. “Off,” she ordered between two tugs, lifting her head from the bed.

Eliane raised her arms to help, momentarily caught with her head in the fabric when Joanna’s stopped tearing at it, her hands moving instead to cup Eliane’s breasts with an incredulous groan.

“Did you change into this at the airport, as well?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Eliane drawled, tossing her blouse behind her and languidly leaning forward into the touch.

“I would like to know how you got a detour via Charles de Gaulle past Controlling,” Joanna growled, watching the border between freckled skin and sheer lace through the grasp of her fingers. “It is a crime you have kept this from me for three months.” She shifted to put her lips to that same skin, but then reached up instead to pull Eliane into a searing kiss, tasting herself against the roof of Eliane’s mouth. “Three months!”

Dazed, Eliane needed a moment to come up with a retort. “If you are still able to count up to three —”

“Right now, I am counting one pair of pants,” Joanna interrupted her, blindly searching for the button. “And believe me, I have noticed how they fit you, but they need to come off.” With one hand still curled firmly into lace, unwilling to let go, she pushed with the other hand at those pants, inadvertently making them bunch up.

The sharp pain shooting up her leg jarred Eliane out of her haze and she could not suppress a hiss. She willed herself to focus instead on the hunger in Joanna’s touch, to have the way she tore at her clothing so impatiently blank out everything else, but Joanna immediately stilled.

“Your knee?”

“I –” Eliane closed her eyes and shook her head. “Turn around,” she commanded softly instead, unwilling to let go of the moment.

Joanna only gave her a small, testing look before she complied and turned onto her stomach. She lifted herself up a little, half raising on her forearms. “I can support you,” she offered.

“I know,” Eliane said fervently. She finally managed to shake off the pants and reveled in the sensation of her naked legs sliding into Joanna’s. Her bad knee, she cushioned off Joanna’s thigh to then stretch out against the expanse of back underneath her, mapping it possessively. She brushed disheveled hair off a shoulder and followed the valley of Joanna’s spine with her tongue, trailing fingers unsteady with desire across warm skin and shifting muscle. The thrill that all this was hers to explore, and no one else’s, was as heady as ever. Her hands skimmed down Joanna’s sides, grazing the sides of her breasts. Joanna rolled her hips in reaction, the movement echoing through Eliane and cutting short all plans of a leisurely pace.

Unceremoniously, Eliane stroked in a direct line across hips and buttocks only to bite into Joanna’s shoulder with a helpless groan at the first touch.

“God –”

Joanna twitched underneath her and Eliane allowed herself one second to savor the sensation of silky heat pooling against her fingertips, and then answered that readiness without further ado, sliding in deep, letting Joanna feel the entire length of her fingers up to her knuckles only to pull back again, drawing a small sound of protest from Joanna. Eliane pushed back in slowly, decisively, allowing Joanna to adjust to the touch.

With her forehead pressed to Joanna’s back, her own mouth torn open, Eliane felt the answering ripple run through them both. She flexed her forearm, Joanna straining into the firmer hold with a moan.

Eliane lifted herself up a bit and balanced her weight with a hand next to Joanna’s head, licking along the shell of her ear. “We need to be quiet,” she reminded her, even as she established a rhythm with her fingers, twisting them just the right bit.

Her only answer was another moan.

Eliane closed her eyes, lightheaded with want as the sound throbbed along her insides. “You know this is the only thing I want to hear right now,” she admitted. “But…” Regretfully, she covered Joanna’s mouth with two fingers, dragging them across her lips.

In response, Joanna sucked those fingers into her mouth and Eliane didn’t even think to stifle her own moan. Her movements gained in insistence, turning into thrusts. She leveraged herself on an elbow best as she could, her own hips moving against Joanna’s with growing urgency. Their skin slid together seamlessly, the dip of Joanna’s lower back against her belly, slick with sweat that also matted Eliane’s hair to her face. She nipped at the salty skin under her lips, squeezing her eyes shut as the warmth of exertion traveled up her arm. It painted a spasm just out of reach that shifted her movements into something less smooth and more frenzied. She drew in air in gulps, dizzy with the feeling of Joanna’s teeth and the wetness of her tongue against her fingers and the hot, rhythmic clenching against the fingers of her other hand.

“Can you– move up a bit?“ Eliane panted in earnest, pushing upwards. „I cannot use my leg without hurting my knee like this –” She added another thrust, not quite there yet, but tantalizingly close as she exhaled against Joanna’s ear. “And I think we both want me to use my leg.”

In response, Joanna managed to lift her hips up a bit, increasing the strain on her arms. It changed the angle just enough for Eliane to add the weight of her thigh that pushed Joanna deeper into the mattress with every thrust in return. The sheet had already come lose in one corner, peeling back to expose the mattress underneath. It bunched up further with the force of their movements, until Joanna bucked up against Eliane’s hand, thrashing violently against her as she came, with enough momentum to bend Eliane’s wrist with a sharp sting. It bled into the mindless need clawing at Eliane, making her want to spread herself across Joanna and push herself over the edge quick and hard. It took conscious effort to slow her fingers, though not their insistence, drawing out Joanna’s stuttering cry until, finally, Joanna collapsed back against the mattress, Eliane still on top of her, the air punctuated only by both their shuddering breaths for long moments.

“God.” Joanna exhaled shakily into the pillows at last. “God, Eliane.” She struggled for breath and then laughed, lightheaded. “I needed that.” She reached out with a hand, searching for Eliane’s fingers and turned her head to look at her. “You.”

Eliane sat up awkwardly, struggling against a kink in her back. A dull hurt now ran up her wrist and she was very aware of the sweat that matted her hair to her skin and was seeping uncomfortably down her neck, of the droplets running across the curve of her breasts and further down.

“Don’t –” Joanna pulled their joined hands against her lips. “Don’t lock yourself away now.”

“I’m not,” Eliane protested. “I –”

Before she could say anything else, Joanna had reached over the rim of the bed, finding the small, soft towel in her bag with two quick gestures and passing it to Eliane. “We are growing old together,” she reminded Eliane with a smile.

Eliane drew the towel across her face, her chest and the slope of her belly before she looked up at Joanna, meeting her gaze. “Yes.”

Joanna nodded, decisive. “And I intend to do quite a bit of that naked still.”

Heat licked at Eliane at the way Joanna kept looking at her. Still, she tried to deflect the mode by giving a pointed glance around the room. “Though hopefully not all of it in other people’s places.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Joanna leaned in. “There is a benefit to this not being your place, or mine.” She effectively trapped Eliane between her arms, hovering over her, still flushed and with her breathing not having evened out yet. It took Eliane an extra moment until the meaning of the words registered. “No one can call you right now. There is no stack of essays waiting. No Department. No work.”

“I got off the plane like this,” Eliane tried to protest halfheartedly.

“Funny you should mention getting off.” Joanna curved a hand to Eliane’s waist, drawing circles with a thumb. She paused at the small gasp the touch elicited and then looked up into Eliane’s eyes. “You want this.” It wasn’t a question.

“All the marble statues in all the parks of Berlin would want your hands on them,” Eliane demurred, even as she already moved against Joanna’s touch. “Probably all of your postdocs, too.”

“Well, be that as it may.” Joanna arched an eyebrow in lazy confidence. “I doubt any of them could fuck me quite like you do.”

There was a small bout of breathless, startled silence, a blush flying up Eliane’s neck.

Joanna’s lips curved upwards. “I cannot believe that still gets you flustered.”

Eliane looked at those curled lips for one long moment before she arched up and drew Joanna into a passionate kiss.

Joanna pushed her back into the bedding and then gripped Eliane’s thigh, carefully above the scars now lining Eliane’s knee, but no less demanding. Traces of wetness still clung to the smooth skin when Joanna pulled the curve of leg upwards, closer to her own hips.

“Let me look at you.”

She didn’t avert her gaze as she reached to the side, easily picking up the small pillow from her bag with one hand and sliding into place underneath Eliane’s hips.

“I am so tired of being the pillow queen,” Eliane huffed, even as she shifted and the pressure in her lower back and along her leg let up, letting her relax further underneath Joanna. “This is not my standard.”

Joanna leaned in with a hum. “Oh, don’t worry.” She licked a path along the freckles that dotted the soft shadows around Eliane’s clavicles. “I intend to make you work for it.” Her nails followed the path of her tongue and moved down Eliane’s sternum, drawing a soft whimper. Joanna swallowed the sound in another kiss, open-mouthed and unabashed in its neediness. Her grip on Eliane’s hips grew firmer and she felt Eliane move restlessly against it.

Joanna eyes darkened. “This never gets old.”

“What?” Eliane managed to get out.

“You.” Joanna didn’t look away from her. “Wanting this.” She leaned a little lower, pushing Eliane’s thigh another bit upward with the motion. “Me.”

One of her hands trailed up to cup a breast, grazing it with a palm before Eliane into against the caress, searching for a firmer touch.

“Yes,” Eliane admitted, her drawl more a challenge than a confession.

Joanna’s hand clenched reflexively around the curve in her grasp. “You saying ‘yes’ in that tone still drives me crazy.”

“You –”

But whatever Eliane had meant to reply turned into a gasp when Joanna bent her head and replaced the grip of her hand with the pull of slow, intent sucking. She didn’t let up until Eliane’s fingers were clenching in her hair and her hips had started to writhe against the weight above her on their own accord.

“I want you to move,” Joanna breathed, heated air curling along sensitized skin, still wet from the touch of her tongue. “Move until there is nothing else but this.” She reached up to curve a palm to Eliane’s temple, brushing a bit of hair that stuck out to the side behind her ear. “I don’t want you to be anywhere else but here.” She leaned in closer, her words coming almost against Eliane’s mouth. “With me.”

Eliane lifted her head, chasing Joanna’s lips and when Joanna kept withdrawing, a challenging gleam in her eye, Eliane wrapped her leg around Joanna’s hips, locking her in place and capturing her mouth as a result. She arched up at the sensation of Joanna pressing into her more firmly and at the way Joanna’s hands borrowed into her skin in reaction, until one of those hands moved, fingertips ghosting along her side and then sliding down her belly, closer towards the coiled desire that had her ache with need.

The first, gentle touch was enough to make Eliane close her eyes, her mouth moving soundlessly. When she opened her eyes again, it was right into Joanna’s gaze, tender, but lined with barely restrained hunger.

“Are you going to be okay?”

Eliane hesitated “I think so –”

“Wait.”

Joanna shifted a bit to the side for seconds too brief to make Eliane self-conscious. She heard the quiet the snap of a tube lid and the Joanna’s fingers were back, coated with cool, thick liquid, smoothing over the sharp edge of need at the same time it stoked it further.

“Just making sure we can keep going,” Joanna murmured, her lips already back against Eliane’s skin. She trailed her tongue along a tendon in Eliane’s neck, up until her breath hit Eliane’s ear and made Eliane push herself forward against Joanna’s touch without reserve.

Joanna’s breath caught in her throat at the sensation of Eliane drawing her in, her fingers enveloped by velvety heat.

But the more Joanna struggled to breathe as she strove to offer a pace with her hips and her hand, distracted again and again by the pulsing against her fingertips, the more Eliane seemed able to maintain her focus, grinding herself down on Joanna’s thigh and hand with slow, controlled movements.

She arched an eyebrow as Joanna panted in earnest. “Hard at work?” She caught a drop of sweat along Joanna’s forehead with a fingertip, brushing it away with a tender gesture. “Was that what you meant by ‘working for it’ earlier…?”

Joanna glanced up at her with a grunt, her chest and upper arms already glistening with sweat anew. “Watch it,” she replied easily, meeting the challenge in tone.

Eliane looped her hands around Joanna’s neck. “I _am_ watching, and you seem even more eager than I am,” she observed, a smirk in her voice. “And I have some ideas what to do about that, in a bit…” She drew Joanna’s head down against her neck, clamping her leg more firmly around Joanna’s hips, and continued to set the rhythm.

Joanna took a minute to leave a sharp mark against the freckled skin of Eliane’s chest while she maintained the pace. “I can strip you of coherent speech and make you beg in the span of two minutes,” she said casually and then soothed over the mark with a soft rasp of her tongue that resonated through every one of Eliane’s nerves. “But why hurry?”

“Don’t make it too long,” Eliane said hastily, breaking the teasing mood. “I don’t know how long I can… – I don’t want it to fizzle out and lose it.”

“I’ve got you,” Joanna promised, pinning Eliane in place with the slow confidence of her movements. “We are not losing it. We’re not fizzling out.”

A first uncontrolled quaver ran through Eliane when Joanna added another finger, retreating nearly fully to then push back into her with single-minded intent, deep and unhurried, the heel of her hand adding a maddening counterpoint of contact, only to move out of reach again.

“Please,” Eliane gasped.

“We are not there yet,” Joanna breathed against her ear, winding Eliane, impossibly, yet another bit higher. “Open up for me. Let me in.”

A light tremble threaded into the motion of Eliane’s hips as she moved and kept moving, now beyond control, clutching blindly at the sheets and at Joanna’s arms.

“That’s it…” Joanna coaxed, her voice warm, but then breaking when Eliane quivered against her, her movements turning erratic. “God, Lil –” Her own touch became frantic in reply, an edge of possessiveness to it.

Eliane’s perception narrowed down to Joanna’s breath against her ear and the pulse thundering along her veins, to the brush off Joanna’s knuckles and the feeling of being stretched by her fingers, having her strain towards the edge that was a firmer and deeper promise with every languid stroke.

She found her mouth suddenly covered by a palm, softly, and had not even been aware it had been open, her throat parched.

“We need to be quiet,” Joanna murmured, a teasing lilt to her tone, but just as affected by seeing Eliane surrender to her touch. Her kiss was as soft as her touch was demanding, and Eliane was so far gone she had to tear her mouth away to breathe, her eyes squeezed shut as she moved with abandon, until she came in a clash of teeth and lips and tears, the sound spilling from her throat high and unfamiliar, caught against Joanna’s neck who held unto her just as blindly as she rode out wave after wave, only slowly coming back into herself.

“Jesus,” Eliane finally whispered, her voice very faint.

Joanna let herself fall forward, sending another aftershock through Eliane who reveled in the perfect weight and strength of the body on top of her while she still tried to catch her breath. She let her leg slide off Joanna’s hips, but held onto her when she moved to withdraw her fingers. “Stay,” she pleaded, shifting delicately against the continued pressure inside of her. “Just for a moment longer.” Slowly, she reached up and combed the hair out of Joanna’s eyes with wonder. “How did we ever make it through three months apart?”

“You tell me,” Joanna said, very gently pulling back her hand when Eliane’s expression showed the first hint of discomfort.

Eliane curled into her with a satisfied groan. “I am not sure I can move.”

Joanna turned onto her side and took Eliane with her. “When we really cannot move any longer, I want to be able to remember this, right now.” She smiled, and then gave Eliane an arch look. “And apropos, I remember your indignant protests when they recommended you pick up yoga to aid your recovery, but... that seems to be working out quite nicely?”

“I may have done a few extra sessions,” Eliane admitted, smiling into Joanna’s shoulder.

“Anything as long as it is competitive,” Joanna muttered fondly, drawing Eliane more snugly against her. “I cannot believe we haven’t passed out with exhaustion. We should be asleep.”

“We should be taking a shower,” Eliane retorted. “Do you think the coast is clear to sneak across the floor into the bathroom? Or limp across, as it were.”

“I’ll check,” Joanna offered, moving out of the embrace and balancing herself on an arm to stand. She bent down to pick the towel off the floor and tossed it at Eliane who was looking at her in open appreciation. “Hold that thought, Professor Darhayne,” she advised. “I foresee intense research activity to deepen this particular angle in the upcoming eighteen days and a half.”

Eliane gave Joanna a smoldering glance and then sat up. “I am willing to put considerable resources towards this promising desiderate, Professor van de Kreek.” She surveyed the rumpled sheets, one corner torn off the mattress, and the comforter on the floor. “Although I will not be able to look Brett in the eye in the morning.”

Joanna snorted. “Please. Brett will high-five you.”

“And Agniesza?” Eliane drew the towel across her neck.

“After two decades with Brett?” Joanna paused in drawing a t-shirt over her head and raised a pointed eyebrow at Eliane. “She will high-five you, too.” She opened the door a fraction and listened out into the hallway. “I think everyone is already asleep,” she concluded. “Save for Bertha and Agniesza, probably. There is still light coming from the living room, but no loud voices.”

Eliane reached for Joanna’s discarded green shirt and slipped into it. “No time like the present.” She tiptoed past Joanna out into the hallway, moving a little unevenly.

In the living room, the voices had quieted down.

“I think I missed the last ten minutes of conversation.” Bjarne said with a yawn from where he had been half dozing on the coach. “I’m heading to bed.”

“Lightweight,” Bertha stated.

“You are the only one who gets to call me a lightweight, Daniels,” Bjarne said as he moved to stand and stretched, easily towering over everyone. “Goodnight, all of you.”

“Goodnight,” Agniesza echoed. “Philippe, another glass?”

“We could take a cab together later, Philippe,” Bertha suggested.

Bjarne turned out once more in the doorway. “You could share Adrian’s room, too,” he offered, addressing Philippe. “I bet he has a gym mat somewhere that I could borrow.”

“Do I look like sleep next to elks?” Philippe asked archly, but it took him a moment to come up with the retort.

“Don’t diss it,” Bjarne shrugged comfortably. “I’ve slept next to worse. We probably both have.”

“Be that as it may…” Philippe pointed at Albrecht. “But this restless young man there could use another crisp walk, and so could I.” He moved to stand, Albrecht following suit and shaking out his coat.

“Are you sure?” Agniesza asked gently. “It’s freezing out there.”

“If I stay, it will be harder to be alone again tomorrow,” Philippe admitted. “And I still need to check on the brioche, or breakfast will be a very sad affair.”

“Mhm, brioche.” Brett’s eyes lit up. “You are spoiling us this year. – Wait, I’ll see you out at least.”

“You just want to cuddle Albrecht once more,” Agniesza said in fond accusation.

“But he has been such a good boy all night!” Brett replied. She stood and moved to pick up the empty glasses. “I’ll clean up, you and Bertha enjoy that last drink.” She put a hand on Agniesza’s shoulder in passing and Agniesza reached up, covering it with her own for a moment, soaking up the familiar warmth.

 _“Kösz_ _i.”_

“You still won’t let her have a dog, will you?” Bertha asked once they were alone.

“We practically have a dog,” Agniesza pointed out. She crossed her legs where she sat on the couch. “I am planning to have a cat again once the children are out of the house, though.”

“My mother would never let me live it down if I got a cat,” Bertha pondered, chuckling at her own predicament. “I don’t need to give her that ammunition. Besides, I am about to become co-parent to a dog, if I really move across the channel.”

“Leaving everything behind again…” Agniesza shook her head. “Aren’t you afraid of that?”

“No.” Bertha shrugged. “I never managed to fit back in again. And that is endlessly frustrating, like a familiar blanket that’s not quite large enough any longer. And with bloody Brexit now –”

“Not feeling at home any longer in your own country. Say no more.” Agniesza looked past Bertha for a moment, lacing her fingers together. “What Orbán is doing is horrific. He is inflicting so much lasting damage… Some days, I am secretly relieved I don’t have much family left. I don’t know if I could go back now.”

“At least we have a choice,” Bertha allowed. “I will miss the garden the most. Which is odd. I could plant a garden anywhere!”

“I tend to think I don’t miss anything,” Agniesza confessed. “But sometimes, when the light is just right, I miss the smell of the early summer mornings so much that it hurts. Or the taste of the bread. Not even the good one, just normal bread.”

“I know the feeling.” Bertha sighed. “We are all old enough now to have our homes in the past.” She shifted in her seat. “Though I will never get used to the eerie sensation of moving through streets where my history crosses my path in forms of stumbling stones. – There are quite a few in Innsbruck.”

“At least there are stumbling stones,” Agniesza weighed in. “Under Orbán, it will never –”

She was interrupted by the sound of a low, throaty voice out in the hallway, followed by a reply that sounded teasing, even if the words were unintelligible. There was silence for a few seconds, then another phrase, even lower in tone, carried over to them as a hum.

Bertha turned to Agniesza with a quirked eyebrow. “ _Ma nischtana_ …”

Agniesza listened on for a moment, following the murmurs until a door down the hallway was drawn shut. “No Peach Melba for dessert tomorrow, then.”

“Philippe will be crushed,” Bertha surmised drily.

“As will Emma, because that would have meant more flambéing with the blowtorch,” Agniesza added.

Bertha nodded thoughtfully. “The only thing flambéed may be your guestroom.”

“Probably,” Agniesza conceded with a laugh. “Did you manage to talk to Eliane earlier?”

“Talk some sense in her, you mean?” Bertha leaned back against the cushions. “Growing old is work and takes courage, and being stubborn about it doesn’t help. That’s all there is to it. She just needed to hear it from someone else.”

Agniesza shook her head. “Let’s hope they talk about it. To each other, for a change.”

“I think they will,” Bertha said. “Although they might do it in monograph format.”

“That deserves a final toast,” Agniesza decided. She stood and reached for a remote on the shelf. At the press of a button, a panel in a low cabinet to the side slid open. Agniesza crouched down to draw out a crystal carafe with an amber liquid.

“Impressive.” Bertha dipped her head. “Should I be worried about Judi Dench stepping out and calling someone a dinosaur?”

Agniesza chuckled. “I am not taking chances with the good Tokay.” Another push of button dimmed the lights a bit more.

“Why do we worry about Lil and Jo setting the guestroom aflame if you and Brett have a bachelor pad on remote right in the living room?” Bertha asked. She eyes the cushions to her side warily. “Will this fold back now? Is this all linked into your fancy video intercom?”

“No.” Agniesza poured two small glasses and then toyed with the stopper for a moment. “That intercom is only linked to the LKA.”

“The LKA?” Bertha straightened. “What on earth do you have to do with the LKA?”

“In September.” Agniesza sat back down again and brushed a hand across her forehead, looking more tired than before. “Just after the election. One of the AfD delegates who has had it in for Brett for a while now. He tailed her, but of course we couldn’t prove it. Her bike tires were slashed twice.” She sighed. “I think I caught one of his cronies standing across the street two times. Just watching the windows up here. Then Emma was home alone one afternoon –”

“Oh no,” Bertha whispered.

“He just rang at the door, up here, you know?” Agniesza pushed a hand through her hair, her tone bitter “Saying he was a work colleague of Brett’s. That they had an appointment, and whether he could wait for her until she got here. He knew her hours.”

“So she let him in,” Bertha guessed.

“Emma thought it was grown-up to ignore her unease.” Agniesza looked as if she was about to cry. “And she knew his face. She managed to send off a message to Adrian, after she saw how he snooped around. Adrian alerted us, and I called the police. - Brett was with Schubert, so they came barging in with the dogs. They had the jerk cornered by the time the police got here, but he was so smooth about it… And of course, there was no case. Emma let him in.” She balled her hands into fists. “He has a record. One of the right-wing youth groups that got disbanded, back in the nineties. That’s when the LKA got involved.”

“And that’s why you have a video intercom now,” Bertha concluded. “Wankers,” she swore wholeheartedly. “What bastard wankers!”

“Thank you,” Agniesza agreed, raising her glass. “May they all drop dead.”

“I will drink to that! Fucking Wankers,” Bertha repeated for good measure, before she finished her drink. “I am so sorry, Agniesza. – How is Emma?”

“She took it the easiest,” Agniesza replied. “Teenagers. Mothers fussing and worrying and trying to limit her steps and not understanding she can take care of herself. That is her take on it.” She sighed, resting her hands on her knees, delicately balancing her glass. “But Brett is taking it so hard. She would lock Emma up, if she could. And she is feeling guilty because it is her job that brought it on… And I understand that she feels responsible for her constituents. And that she started council work because she wanted to be on the other end. Not treating the victims, but making better laws. But it takes such a toll on her.”

“She has you, though.” Bertha observed. “And I wouldn’t want to meet you in the dark if I had crossed your wife.”

“One more term as chairwoman, I told her. Just one.” Agniesza set down her glass. “Which probably makes me a lousy wife, or a lousy citizen. But I don’t care. I don’t want this job to eat her up.”

“Good for you both if you’re looking out for her,” Bertha said calmly. “We both know Brett would be dense enough to walk head first into a running turbine if she thought it would bring about world peace.”

“And we both know it doesn’t work that way,” Agniesza agreed. “She is more in the garden again,” she said then. “Alone. It does her good.”

“That is about the only thing that has kept me sane this year,” Bertha commented. “Well, not raking leaves this autumn, with how my back has been, but the roses this summer –”

Steps came closer and then Brett rapped her knuckles on the doorframe. “Do I hear roses?” she asked, walking closer. “Do you have new hybrids?”

“Paul smuggled some over from Tyrol,” Bertha said. She looked on as Brett stifled a yawn, and glanced back at Agniesza. “And now that the two of us have successfully avoided helping in the kitchen, I should be heading to my hotel.”

“You know you are welcome to stay,” Brett offered immediately.

“Please.” Bertha raised a hand. “You know I love you all, and I love all the more because we are not sharing a bathroom. – But I will see you for breakfast in the morning, and I will bring croissants, my doctors be damned.” She pointed a finger at Brett who had opened her mouth to protest. “I take enough pills every morning to equal a croissant in weight, what use is that if I cannot enjoy the real thing every now and then?”

Brett shrugged. “I can’t argue with that,” she admitted.

“Be a love and get me out of this seat, Garland,” Bertha said with a wince and held out a hand. “You can log it as a workout.”

“I will also bring you down the stairs,” Brett decided, seeing the wince Bertha did not quite manage to hide as she pulled her to her feet. “Let me call you a cab.” She reached for her phone.

“I would accompany you down myself, but her shoulders are broader than mine,” Agniesza said apologetically.

Bertha patted her arm. “That is quite all right, love. I think we are both appreciative of that little fact.”

Agniesza gave Bertha a long hug and looked on as Brett helped Bertha into her coat and then caught the keys off the shelf at the entrance with a jingle.

“I’ll be right back up, Princess.”

Agniesza breathed in, allowing herself a moment of quiet contentment. By the time she heard the key in the door once more, and then again as Brett locked up behind her, she had put away the tokay and cleaned up the last few things around the couch. Brett ambled back in and nodded at the empty unmarked bottle that Agniesza was clearing away. “Did you find someone to poison with that?” she teased.

“Bjarne and Joanna are still wimps,” Agniesza said with a yawn, following Brett down the hallway. “Philippe is passable. The only one really up to it is Bertha.”

“Come here, Princess,” Brett said with gentle amusement, leading Agniesza into the bathroom and handing her a toothbrush. “Let’s catch some sleep. And I promise I will make you aspirin breakfast in bed if you wake up with a hangover.”

“Sounds good,” Agniesza hummed. She leaned her forehead against Brett’s shoulder, feeling the muscles along Brett’s back move with the rhythmic motion of the brushing.

“Hey, did you hear that?” Brett suddenly stopped in her movements, listening out in the hallway. “Wash that a ‘oor?” she asked around a mouthful of toothpaste foam. “Are the kish ashleep?”

“We are asleep,” Agniesza corrected, her fingers settling between Brett’s shoulder blades in a calming gesture. “And everyone is all right.”

Two doors down, Joanna held onto the door handle to move it back up slowly and soundlessly. “I think I barely escaped Brett,” she said in a low voice. “For next year, we need to work on the logistics.”

Eliane was sitting in bed, with the blankets drawn up and a book in her lap, regarding her with amusement. Joanna allowed herself a long look at the thin straps of Eliane’s nightgown and her bare shoulders, and then glanced past her to the tilted window that let in the air Joanna preferred at night.

Eliane closed her book. “Or we could work on seeing each other more often than every three months.”

Joanna stood very still for a moment. The sound of a tram driving past carried up through the window.

“Only here the trams sound like that,” she observed.

“The old ones,” Eliane agreed, listening after the sound. She looked awash with affection at Joanna still standing in front of the bed in a soft t-shirt and long pajama pants that were probably from the men’s department, blinking behind large dark eye frames that had slid down her nose a bit.

“We used to have our place in this city,” Joanna ventured. “The little roof garden in the summer, and the river going by –”

“And we did hear a lot of trams stop down Wald Street, once you made me sleep with the window open,” Eliane added. “The good old days!”

Joanna kept standing in front of the bed. “What about our days now?” she asked quietly. “Do we wait until you retire?” She took a seat at the edge of the bed. “And then what? We wait for another decade until I retire, too?”

Eliane reached out a hand. “I don’t know,” she said, but her fingers closed firmly around Joanna’s.

“I don’t know, either,” Joanna looked down at their linked hands on top of the blanket. “But I know that these past three months –” She shook her head. “I am past the point where I am willing to accept that.” She moved closer and Eliane pushed her book over the edge of the bed to the floor, instead reaching out to brush a few strands of hair out of Joanna’s vision and back behind her ear.

“I don’t want to be grieving for lost minutes that I could have shared with you,” Joanna stated simply. “My job isn’t worth it. Nothing is worth it.”

Eliane shook her head, but before she could get in a word, Joanna had already continued. “I will share director responsibilities for the Research Center. And if they haven’t had that before, well. They can get used to it. I am at a point where I can change things.” She straightened a little. “I am tenured now.”

“You want to split the leadership?” Eliane asked, half aghast.

Joanna shrugged. “I already filed the scheme.”

“I…” A dozen replies flitted through Eliane’s mind. “You wouldn’t have to,” she finally said. “I want to spent more time over here again. More time with you,” she amended. “And the Herder Literature Institute keeps offering me a guest professorship here. I might finally make good on that, though God knows what they think I can do in Creative Writing.” She slid her fingers into Joanna’s, their wedding bands connecting with a quiet rasp. “And, actually – is that Endowment Professorship still in the pipeline?”

“It is,” Joanna said slowly and carefully. “And I have resigned from the panel and severed all professional ties with it.” She took Eliane’s hand between both of her own. “Does that mean you are considering applying for it?”

“If you will consider retiring to Cape Cod with a Golden Retriever afterwards?” Eliane asked back, her tone light. “Or we could make it Leipzig again,” she added quickly, sensing that this was not something to treat with levity now. “Or Berlin? – Anywhere, really, as long as it is with you.”

“How about one of the quaint towns up at the Baltic Sea?” Joanna suggested, and the overwhelming relief in her expression made Eliane’s eyes sting. She folded back the blanket and quickly pulled Joanna underneath it.

“Still close enough to Berlin,” Joanna mused as she settled in and slid an arm around Eliane’s shoulders. “But with a stretch of beach for long walks. Perfect for a dog, too.”

Eliane reached out with an index finger and drew the Joanna’s glasses all the way down her nose. She placed them on the nightstand and then leaned in again, shifting so that she could place a kiss along Joanna’s jaw. “That does sound perfect.”

*************

Adrian rushed into the kitchen still out of breath, making Emma swivel around on her bar stool. “You should go take a shower,” she declared and scrunched up her nose. “You stink.”

Adrian threw his towel at her and then bent over, opening the zippers at the feet of his running tights. “Where’s Mom?”

“Arguing with the Dean,” Emma said succinctly. She pointed into the direction of the study. “Or with someone from the Dean’s office, at least.”

“And Ma?”

“Arguing with someone from the Council. About her new housing scheme.”

“Huh.” Adrian shrugged. “Regular Tuesday, then?” Emma nodded and he turned to look into the coffeepot on the hotplate, finding it empty. Voices carried over from the living room and Adrian sighed. “Figures.” He reached for a glass of water instead and ambled out into the hallway again.

“Philippe and Albrecht are going to be here with the brioche any minute now,” Emma called after him. “You have still time for a shower, though.”

Adrian gave a wave over his shoulder without turning back around and peeked into the living room instead, where Eliane and Joanna were seated on the couch, basking in the winter morning sun that painted highlights of gold and auburn into their hair. Both had a book in hand and a mug of coffee close by, with the steam still curling in the air above. Eliane had one leg resting across Joanna’s lap and just then turned a page with a frown, the rustle carrying over to Adrian.

“Morning, aunts!” he called out, making them look up from their reading momentarily and turning towards him with bright smiles.

“Good morning! Are you bringing the croissants?” Eliane called out. “We’re famished!”

Joanna swatted lightly at her leg. “Eliane!”

To Adrian’s surprise, a bit of a blush crawled up Joanna’s cheeks. Then she squinted across at the article Eliane was reading. “Lezhra? Oh please. I know you like them French, but that arrogant bluster –”

Eliane grinned. “As if you've ever minded my French. Or my arrogance.” The blush on Joanna’s cheeks intensified. Eliane reached out to push two fingers underneath the page Joanna’s was reading. “But of course, if you’re revisiting the late Eco, I guess that’s that. Semiotics of yore!”

“Not all historiography works in Foucauldian ways,” Joanna said primly.

Eliane leaned closer. “Try me,” she challenged.

Both of them were not paying any attention to Adrian any longer, who shook his head and continued down the hallway, but still heard Joanna groan fondly, “You. Are insufferable.”

“Just as you like it,” Eliane replied with enough warmth to have some of it resound even where Adrian stood.

“Happy Holidays,” he murmured to himself.

...

**References:**

  * PRINCE _Will you have me, lady?_  
BEATRICE _No, my lord, unless I might have another for_  
_working days. Your Grace is too costly to wear_  
_every day  
_("Much Ado about Nothing", II/1. - will Literature scholars quote Shakespeare at each other in bed? These two absolutely will.)  


  * Stumbling Stones/Stolpersteine: a small holocaust memorial, remembering single victims with stones let into the pavement.
  * _Ma nischtana_ : The initial Hewbew words starting off the four questions of the Passover seder, the full phrase amounting to "Why is tonight different from all other nights?"
  * _Peach Melba_ : a dessert of peaches and raspberry sauce with vanilla ice cream, named after Melbourne opera diva Nellie Melba (you can flambé the peach, of course).
  * LKA: abbreviation for Landeskriminalamt, a police body on state level that investigates larger threats such as extremist and terrorist violence.
  * AfD: a (needlessly popular) German right-wing party.
  * Herder Literature Institut: renowned creative writing college situated in Leipzig
  * _Köszi_ : short, informal version of _Köszönöm_ , Hungarian for "thank you".
  * Judi Dench stepping out and calling someone a dinsosaur happened in James Bond, "GoldenEye"
  * Charles-de-Gaulle: the airport of Paris (where Joanna suspects Eliane stopped over for lingerie shopping on her way to the Christmas celebration)



**Additional Notes:**

  * I have the thank Fierce on this one for the headcanon checks ("Would Eliane say that?" - "Only if she could turn it into a joke, you know how she gets." - "But would Joanna do this?" - "She absolutely would." - "You are right, she absolutely would.").
  * Special wave to SNL, whose continued support has warmed me throughout writing this.
  * It was a delightful challenge to write intimacy for an age bracket often still overlooked (mid-40s to mid-50s), and to go back to the first love scenes of Eliane and Joanna, trying to figure out what might have turned into a pattern for them along the way, and what kind of frankness and familiarity they might have developed around each other over the years. (We'll see how that evolves for them in another twenty years.)



...


End file.
